Clothes usage durations of working women and their evaluation methods after usage

Clothing is important for the people to reflect their own feelings and thoughts, to feel relax, to look aesthetic, and to gain prestige. Besides, as an element which meeds the psycho-social and physiological needs, it is essential for the social interaction and psychological satisfacton.Fashion, which means temporary novelty and change, has kept its existence changing in time. Fashion, is sometimes a new finding, sometimes the modernization of clothes in the previous times and sometimes the renewal of these clothes with some little changes. As the concept of fashion gets more common, ready-made clothing sector, which only manufactured clothes to cover the body until the recent past, is now making production according to the customer content. Moreover, in parallel with the women taking part in business life more than ever, the increase in clothing needs with variety has become an important factor on the increase of ready-made clothing production for women.As it is easy available and economic, it is known that women choose ready-made clothes more commonly and buy them at the suitable sales seasons for them. So after a certain time, the necessity to clean out the women?s wardrobe emerges and they find different ways to get rid of the clothes which they do not use any more. These methods are to give someone who needs, to donate to a charity, to keep for a younger family member, to use by changing the clothe, to burn or to toss them off. However, the clothes which are thrown away are known to be harmful for the environment with chemical reactions and contribute to ruin the ecological balance.?Ecology?, which has been heard frequently since the 90ies, means a cleaner and safer life. As the environmental problems, as a result of the ecological imbalance, gets more important and more priority day by day, the contept of ecology has been extended and textiles has a big part in this extent. Despite the immensity in the consumption of textiles and its being in every field of life, recycling and reusage studies are not enough in this field.In this research, it is aimed to determine the clothes usage durations of working women and their evaluation methods. On this purpose, how frequently and why working women buy new clothes, what the effects of their social environment on their usage duration are, how they assess the clothes they do not use, what they think about environment ecology and clothe recycling are investigated, and it is tried to find out what they do to evaluate their clothes after usage.In the first part of this research, the definition, importance, purpose of the problem and the reasons why it is thought to be worth studying are explained. In the second part, by giving the conceptial frame about the subject, some theoretical explanations are stated and related research studies are explained in the main line. In the third part, some information about the materials and methods of the research, data collection techniques and data analysis are presented.In the forth part of the research, the data obtained from questionnary results are assessed and all the data statics are analized and presented in charts and the results are extented by discussing. It is found out that working women buy clothes when they need and at the end of the seasons, and individual and environmental factors are effective on their shopping behaviours. Also it is determined that these woeking women evaluate the clothes that they do not wear by giving them to someone who needs and they do not have enough knowledge on recycling and waste evaluation and they do not have any organizational support.In the conclusion part, according to the results of the research, clothes usage duration of working women and their evaluation methods for unworn clothes are stated and some suggestions are put forward for women, institutions and non-governmental organizations.