How women dress for other women - The Conversation US

How women dress for other women - The Conversation US
This Label Makes One Dress – & You’ll Be Wearing It All Season - Refinery29
Wedding dresses and more: New dress shop in Hazelwood is already bursting at the seams - The Mountaineer

Posted: 06 Mar 2020 05:02 AM PST

"If you can't be better than your competition," Vogue editor Anna Wintour once said, "just dress better."

Indeed, new research suggests that women don't just dress to be fashionable, or to outdo one another when it comes to enticing men. They also dress for other women.

But Wintour's quote misses some of the nuances that go into the outfits women choose with female friends, co-workers and acquaintances in mind. It's not just about dressing better. In fact, my colleagues and I found that women can be motivated by another factor: avoiding the slings and arrows of other women.

The psychology of women's wardrobes

My social psychology lab explores how women navigate their social relationships with other women. With my co-authors, Oklahoma State graduate student Ashley M. Rankin and Arizona State University graduate student Stefanie Northover, I recently studied what goes into women's fashion choices.

Of course, both men and women consider a variety of concerns when selecting their outfits: cost, fit, occasion.

Existing psychological research on women's clothing choices tends to center on how women dress for men – the makeup, shoes and colors they select to impress the opposite sex.

But we posed a different question: How might women dress for other women?

For over a century, psychologists have been interested in competition between men. Only over the past few decades have researchers started to seriously look into how women actively compete with one another.

The competition isn't necessarily nice. Like men who compete with one another, women can be aggressive toward other women they're competing with. But it's rarely the physical kind. Instead, social scientists like Joyce Benenson, Kaj Bjorkqvist and Nicole Hess have shown that women are more prone to rely on social exclusion and reputation-damaging gossip.

So we wondered: Do women ever dress defensively – to mitigate the chance that other women might go after them?

We know that women who are physically attractive and who wear revealing clothing are more likely to be targets of same-sex aggression. For example, psychologists Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma found that women behaved more aggressively toward an attractive woman when she was dressed in a short skirt and low-cut shirt than when that exact same woman wore khakis and a crewneck.

We reasoned that women would be aware of this dynamic – and some would try to avoid it. So we tested this theory in a series of experiments.

Dressing defensively

First, we studied whether people would expect women to be aggressive toward attractive, scantily clad women.

We asked 142 people to read a scenario about two women, Carol and Sara, who met for coffee after connecting on a friend-finder app that was like Tinder, but for platonic relationships. We asked the participants how they thought Carol would treat Sara during an otherwise uneventful coffee date. Although the scenarios were the same, some people saw a photo of Sara that depicted her as an attractive woman wearing khakis and a crewneck; others saw a photo of her wearing a low-cut shirt and short-skirt; and a third group saw her in the more revealing outfit, but the image had been photoshopped to make her look less physically attractive.

We found that when Sara was attractive and revealingly dressed, people expected Carol would be meaner to Sara.

We then wanted to see whether women would also act on the awareness of this dynamic, so we ran a series of experiments with college-aged and adult women from the U.S.

For a set of two studies, we instructed female participants to imagine that they were going to meet new people in a professional setting, like a networking event, or at a social gathering, such as a birthday party. They were also told to imagine the event as either single-sex or mixed-sex.

In the first, we asked women to draw their ideal outfits for those events, and we later had undergraduate research assistants measure how much skin was revealed. In the second, we asked women to choose outfits from a menu of options – akin to shopping for clothes online. Each of the possible outfits had been rated for modesty by a separate set of participants.

In both studies, women chose more revealing outfits for social events than professional ones. This wasn't surprising. But interestingly, women chose less revealing outfits to meet up with an all-female group – regardless of whether it was a professional or social setting.

But wouldn't the more revealing clothing in mixed-group settings simply reflect their desire to attract men?

Not exactly. Not all women dressed the same for other women. The women who rated themselves as more physically attractive were the ones who chose more modest outfits when meeting up with a group of women. This supports the idea that they were dressing defensively – to avoid bringing attention to themselves and being targeted by the other women.

Because same-sex aggression is more likely to come from strangers than friends, in our final experiment we asked 293 young women, aged 18 to 40, what they would wear to meet up with a prospective female friend. Again, we found that more physically attractive women indicated that they would dress with more discretion.

Together, these findings show that women don't always dress to impress. Nor do they dress to aggress. Instead, there's a more subtle social dance taking place – one that involves humility, hesitance and heightened awareness.

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This Label Makes One Dress – & You’ll Be Wearing It All Season - Refinery29

Posted: 05 Mar 2020 10:00 PM PST

Aiming to channel an off-duty Naomi Campbell in nothing but a sheer slip and naked sandals? What about the queen of grunge, Courtney Love attending the 1995 Oscars in a high-shine slip with tongue-in-cheek tiara and a slick of wine-coloured lipstick? If you're after a more polished look, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is your inspiration; the icon of understated cool would sling a double-breasted coat or blazer over her slip, adding a preppy Alice band and knee-high boots for extra Upper West Side appeal. The allure of the slip dress is eternal and, paired with chunky Dr. Martens or subtle mules, a battered leather jacket or a pearlescent beaded bag, it can say whatever you want it to.

Wedding dresses and more: New dress shop in Hazelwood is already bursting at the seams - The Mountaineer

Posted: 06 Mar 2020 08:12 AM PST

When Mandy Wildman opened the doors of her new consignment dress shop at 432 Hazelwood Ave. at the first of the year, she had no idea her business would take off so fast.

In fact, the shop Uplove Bridal & More has been bustling so much that she is currently looking for a local seamstress who can help her with dress alterations — which is just one of the many dress services she offers.

Uplove is a dress shop that mostly sells consigned wedding dresses, but also offers a great deal more — prom dresses, alterations, custom dresses and even dresses Wildman makes herself — just for fun.

"My main focus is bridal, prom and formal wear, but I also have a section of custom, playful day wear," she said.

Wildman is sort of a jack of all trades when it comes to dresses. She can take a vintage wedding dress from 1962 and modernize it to look like something young women would wear today. She can also take a simple wedding dress that has been passed down to a daughter who is getting married and alter it to create the perfect dress for the daughter's wedding.

"We can make it work for you," Wildman said. "If you've got a dress that needs some alterations or needs to be sculpted to your body, I love doing that."

Wildman is also conscious of the environment, which plays into her business of recycling wedding dresses.

"When a dress sits in a closet, it's not environmentally friendly," she said, adding that clothing is second most common item to end up in a landfill. "Using a beautiful gown more than once is the best thing we can do for the next generation. Could we just re-use them?"

But altering dresses isn't what Wildman is passionate about — she wants to create amazing experiences for women and brides while also salvaging beautiful dresses that would otherwise get left in a basement for decades or thrown away. She can also dye dresses to suit any colors needed.

"I want women to know that they can get a wedding dress that fits them and their style as a person," Wildman said. "I'm respectful of budgets, and if they come in and want their dream gown made from scratch, I can do that. I'm a designer and a maker."

Wildman's passion for making dresses runs in the family. In fact, her grandmother was a dress maker and made beautiful gowns in the 1940s, and her mother was a seamstress in the United Kingdom.

Wildman is thrilled to see her business taking off the ground so rapidly, and hopes to find a seamstress or two who can help her with her alterations.

But most of all, she is looking forward to helping even more brides she can help create the dress of their dreams.

"I want to give a bride the experience of a lifetime," Wildman said. "You're going to have a series of experiences as a bride — and I want you to have stress-free, uplifting experience."

Learn more about Uplove Bridal & More at www.uplovebridal.com.