Male and Female Style Preference and Perceived Fashion Risk

This research compared fashion preferences of males and females and the types of risk that they perceived in both men's and women's clothing styles. Thirty married couples responded to drawings of six men's suits and six dresses using a semantic differential and full forced-choice paired comparison. Polar adjectives were selected to describe temporal quality of styles and specific types of per ceived risk. Males and females ranked clothing for themselves and for the other sex in the same order of preference and classified styles into the same temporal categories. Most-preferred and least-preferred garments were described using the same words; preferences for suits and dresses were associated with aesthetic appeal and performance risk. Males and females differed in their descriptions of the aesthetic appeal and economic risk of the garments. Both sexes judged the aesthetic appeal of styles for the other sex more favorably than that of styles for themselves. Males and females differed in their perceptions of money risk but not in their perceptions of performance risk. These differences could contribute to conflict between husbands and wives about clothing choices for each other and the cost of garments.