Exploring “Everyday Experience Methods” as a means to assess the (social-)psychological comfort of clothing

One of the main challenges for the Science of Clothing Comfort, is to uncover the intricacies and complexities of the psychological aspects of the clothing comfort perception. The concept and the parameters of this comfort dimension are still in the process of maturing, and the methods and tools to assess this component are still underdeveloped. One of the main drawbacks of the research on the psychological comfort of clothing resides in the dependency of the context and situational information, to elaborate a psychological comfort or discomfort perception. In the realm of the psychological or social-psychological comfort, it’s primordial that the context variables are considered. This pilot study aims at examining the feasibility of assessing the perception of (social-)psychological comfort of clothing, using an everyday experience method. For this purpose, the PACO application (pacoapp.com) was the chosen platform.This work is supported by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Programme - COMPETE and by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007136. The first author would also like to gratefully acknowledge the support from the Federal University of Technology, especially, the Fashion Design Department and the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.