Fashion’s Role in Clothing & Communication During COVID

By Dr. Anna Rostomyan and Dr. Monika Klein

In the wake of global lockdowns, fashion—once a statement of personal and public identity—was suddenly confined to private spaces. This study sought to explore those behavioural shifts and offer insights into the evolving mindset of fashion consumers in the COVID and post-COVID times, also taking psychological biases into account.

We all mostly view fashion in terms of fashionable clothing and style. Yet fashion is far more than that; it actually involves trends in architecture, trends in decoration, trends in clothing, in linguistic choices and even trends in our communication styles.

Truly, in our everyday life, we embrace various instances where we willingly or unwillingly deal with fashion trends, be it in terms of what to wear, where to dine, which car to drive, where to live, or which words to choose in our everyday communication.

When speaking of everyday communication, there are some words that become fashionable depending on the ongoing fashion in the air. Thus, for instance, recently there have been such words in contemporary English language as “dope”, in phrases as “a dope make-up” or “a dope car”, where the word “dope” does not translate to its main semantic meaning of a “drug”, but is rather used as an intensifier, a function word that enhances the overall positive meaning of the word that it precedes. It can thus be understood as “a fantastic / marvellous / splendid / amazing make-up / car”.

Another similar example representing our linguistic choices governed by fashion trends would be the English word “pissled”, which in modern slang can be analyzed as a combination of “puzzled+pissed off”. According to Daniel Goleman (2017), who in his WOBY talk said that this is a neologism used in English modern slang, this word was especially in vogue when Blackberry phones were widely used by fashionable people (e.g., Paris Hilton) and when someone owned a Blackberry, people around were positively puzzled and also pissed off for not having a Blackberry themselves.

As we can see, even in our everyday life, merely choosing the words that we use in our routine communication can be widely influenced by what is currently in vogue, as in the times of Blackberry, when it was one of the leading fashionable telecommunication products of the time before the touch-screen phones came into being.

As for the most generally recognized notion of “style” that the concept of “fashion” widely refers to, it is the way we dress and the everyday shopping choices that we consciously or subconsciously make depending on the ongoing widespread fashion or based on our very own individual sense of style. As Yves Saint Laurent once truly stated, “Fashion fades, style is eternal.” yet our individual style is also being widely influenced by earlier or current fashion trends.

When creating our very own individual style, we sometimes have to make purchases or adapt our owned products to create an image of ourselves presentable to the outward world. Moreover, we firmly believe that fashion is a way of communicating our internal states. In a globalized market, we are daily faced with a great variety of products and services that are meticulously planned and proficiently marketed to us so that they have an emotional influence on our brain centres and activate a desire to acquire them. An example is the use of the colour red in reduced prices, a colour that stands for courage and sparks in us a strong desire to purchase this or that marketed product that will presumably soothe our psychological well-being.

As a matter of fact, we all want to experience the thrill of intense positive emotions that will increase the generation of our happy hormones, which will eventually ensure the experience of such positive emotions as excitement, happiness, joy, glee, delight, hilarity, euphoria, and / or amusement. For this very reason, we may indulge in something called emotional shopping, which has the intention of ensuring happy emotions but brings with it some pitfalls and difficulties that are important to consider in order to limit its potentially negative effects on our psychology.

Emotional shopping refers to shopping behaviour and the consumption of goods under a high emotion of excitement, without taking the time to really think about it and weigh up whether it is a good bargain. The catch is that we firmly believe that the money spent and the objects acquired will guarantee the experience of positive emotions. Yet, when the bank statement arrives at the end of the month, we might feel somewhat discouraged and even experience such negative emotions as sadness, as well as annoyance and irritation with ourselves for not being able to control our shopping choices (Rostomyan, 2025).

Here are some strategies that marketers use; the more we know about them, the better we can identify marketing tricks and refrain from emotional shopping, and instead shop rationally for what we really need:

• The anchoring bias: This occurs when we rely heavily on the first piece of information we receive, or the “anchor” (e.g., the previous price) even when subsequent information becomes available. For example, if you go to a car dealer, a salesperson might first propose you a car that costs a great deal of money and only after that suggest to you another one, a less expensive option. In this case, over-relying on the price of the first car, you might be increasingly persuaded to acquire the second option, even if its price is not as low as it perhaps should be, over-relying on the calculation of the price difference between the two proposed options.
• The loss aversion bias: This is a cognitive bias in which the emotional impact of a loss is felt more intensely than the joy of an equivalent gain. For example, when you lose 20 dollars and then gain 20 dollars, you might experience a much stronger pain from the loss than from the experience of the joy you get from gaining the same amount of money. For many of us, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. This technique is also used in marketing to generate more sales.
• The confirmation bias: This is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports our prior beliefs or values. This can be detected, for instance, in someone using yes/no questions to find a number they suspect to be the number 3. They might ask, “Is it an odd number?” People prefer this type of question, called a “positive test”, even when a negative test such as “Is it an even number?” would yield exactly the same information. A prime example is when we try to rationalize our purchases, falling victim to the bias through confirmation mechanisms like emotional investment (Rostomyan, 2025).

If we take into consideration the above and reflect on our choices and the marketers’ strategies, we will be more likely to reduce the drastic effects of emotional shopping that can really cause us mental harm and emotional struggles if not recognized and addressed appropriately. Actually we strongly believe that being aware of the aforementioned marketing psychological strategies will make us more rational with our purchases and enable us to make better-suited decisions.

To have deeper insights into how our emotional well-being and our shopping choices are interrelated and interlinked, especially during the COVID-pandemic, we have conducted a survey on people’s choices on shopping and fashion. The results of our research and survey are briefly presented below.

Case Study: COVID And Fashion

The COVID-19 pandemic brought sweeping changes to daily routines, including how people react and interact with fashion. Our research investigated how clothing habits evolved during the pandemic, what influenced consumer behaviour, and how individuals anticipate dressing in a post-pandemic world.

As physical stores closed and people adapted to remote work and restricted movement, their clothing choices began to reflect new priorities.

In the wake of global lockdowns, fashion—once a statement of personal and public identity—was suddenly confined to private spaces. As physical stores closed and people adapted to remote work and restricted movement, their clothing choices began to reflect new priorities. This study sought to explore those behavioural shifts and offer insights into the evolving mindset of fashion consumers in the COVID and post-COVID times.

Methodology

A digital survey was conducted among 76 individuals during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants, primarily women aged 20–60, were asked about their clothing choices, shopping habits, and future fashion intentions. The survey included multiple-choice and open-ended questions that helped us gain deeper insights into the shopping and fashion choices of the respondents.

Results and Data Analysis

1. Daily clothing choices during COVID-19