Clothing Comfort- Physiological Status and Psychological Status
Authors: Lavanya S  
Published: October 2020

The primary need of people to dress has changed as time passed, because different high-tech fibers,
yarns, fabrics, finishing applications, trends and society influences have completely changed. Welfare and
comfort properties have become decisive components to make a product appreciated and successful. This
paper presents the detailed explanation of clothing comfort, its subgroups and also the Physiological status
and psychological status of the people.
Clothing also known as clothes, apparel and attire is items worn on the body. Clothing is typically
made of fabrics or textiles but over time has included garments made from animal skin or other thin layers
of materials put together. The wearing of comfort clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a
feature of all human societies. Comfort or being comfortable is a sense of physical or psychological ease,
often characterized as a lack of hardship. Persons who are lacking in comfort are uncomfortable, or
experiencing discomfort. A degree of psychological comfort can be achieved by recreating experiences that
are associated with pleasant. Persons who are surrounded with things that provide psychological comfort
may be described as being "in their comfort zone". Because of the personal nature of positive associations,
psychological comfort is highly subjective. As the year goes the word comfort is been used in all areas such
as food, work, people and clothing.
Thermal comfort is the condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment
and is assessed by subjective evaluation. The human body will release excess heat into the environment, so
the body can continue to operate. The heat transfer is proportional to temperature difference. Maintaining this
standard of thermal comfort for occupants is one of the important goals of HVAC (heating, ventilation,
and air conditioning) design engineers. And in designing of clothes is the most important goal of a fashion
designer.
There are six primary factors that directly affect thermal comfort that can be grouped in two
categories: personal factors - because they are characteristics of the occupants - and environmental
factors - which are conditions of the thermal environment. The former are metabolic rate and clothing level,
the latter are air temperature, mean radiant temperature, air speed and humidity. Even if all these factors
may vary with time, standards usually refer to a steady state to study thermal comfort, just allowing limited
temperature variations.
The study was conducted to know the responses about comfort clothing in Physiological status and
psychological status acceptance. Since there are large variations from person to person in terms
of physiological and psychological satisfaction, it is hard to find an optimal temperature for everyone in a
ABSTRACT
62 International Journal for Modern Trends in Science and Technology
given space. Survey is been collected to define conditions that will be found comfortable for a specified
percentage of occupants, being comfortable is a sense of physical or psychological factors.
Understanding clothing comfort, Need and consumer trends basic and universal need of consumers in
clothing is comfort and they look for good feel and comfort when they buy clothing and other textile materials.
Clothing is very important in our life that we use every day to obtain physiological and psychological comfort
and also to ensure physical conditions around our body suitable for survival. Therefore, it is extremely
important for the survival of human beings and improvement of the quality of our life to have good
understanding of the fundamentals of clothing comfort. From the viewpoint of the manufacturers of clothing
and textile materials, understanding of clothing comfort has substantial financial implications in the effort to
satisfy the needs and wants of consumers in order to obtain sustainable competitive advantages in modern
consumer markets. Consumer always expects some additional functional qualities from the clothes they
purchase. Clothing is manufactured in a wide range of thermal, tactile and physical properties to meet
consumer needs. Depending on the nee. and expectations of the consumer's, the clothing and textile
manufacturers provide wide range of options to enhance human comfort. For example, clothing made from
blends and natural fibres are preferred to man-made fibres for all comfort attributes except smoothness or
woven fabric are preferred to knits for smoothness, thickness and openness. To understand the basics of
clothing comfort, sensory tools as well as the equipment’s to evaluate the comfort related characteristics of
textile materials have been developed. Large number of studies has been carried out and many equipment
are developed in the textile and clothing area such as mechanical, thermal and surface testing, so as to
evaluate the related physical properties, but the body between measurement and the consumer feeling of
comfort are still difficult to establish.
Consumers want everything from the clothing, i.e. it should look good, feel good, perform well, said
like their clothing to match with their chosen attitudes, roles and images. Consumers are now allowing touch,
smell, intuition, and emotion to influence their decision on clothing selection more than their aesthetic sense.
Asa result, great importance is being attributed to the wearing experience and thus comfort is being
reinforced as a key parameter in clothing. It is also true that requirements of consumers on comfort changes
with products and situations. Clearly, understanding and satisfying the needs of consumer towards clothing
products are crucial for the long-term survival and growth of clothing and textile demand. Understanding and
enhancement of clothing comfort is definitely one of the important issues.