Environmental mappings as a basis for the formulation of clothing demands

The basic functional demands on working clothes are protection and comfort. These basic demands are determined by the three variables: (1) level of activity of the worker, (2) environmental pollution and impacts, (3) surrounding climate. The environmental mapping is a systematic method to detect, quantify and analyse the demands on working clothes in different working situations. A pilot study was carried out in Swedish industry to investigate the general conditions regarding working clothes and to find the correspondence between clothing demands and environmental factors. The second study was motivated by clothing problems in the mechanical engineering industry. In both studies the three determining variables for the clothing of each interviewed person were given certain code values according to their measured or graded values. The pilot study confirmed the theoretical model for work classification. The model serves as an instrument for finding relevant clothing demands for clothing development and clothing procurement, and as a source of information for the workers so that they can check the clothing demands for their own working conditions. In the study of the mechanical engineering industry all 310 interviewed workers with 20 different professions could be divided into three groups with different clothing demands. These quantified functional clothing demands were transformed into certain demands in terms of textile material and model design. The development work finally resulted in new clothes, an overall and bib-and-brace trousers in various suitable materials.