Term
Definition
Sustainable Fashion Idea
Affective Atmospheres
The shared, often non-verbal moods and emotional energies created in musical spaces, influenced by sounds, visuals, and environment.
Performances could consciously use slow-crafted, sustainable fashion to create affective atmospheres of care, resilience, and environmental stewardship.
Archival Consciousness
Awareness of how performances and garments become part of cultural memory and are curated for future generations.
Artists could shift to slow fashion costumes intended for long-term archival rather than fast trend-driven looks, building future musical heritage responsibly.
Choral Robes
Uniform robes worn by choirs for formal performances.
Transitioning to Fair Trade-certified, low-impact dyed robes would modernize the sustainability standards in traditional choral environments.
Concert Outfit
Specially designed or curated looks worn for major music concerts.
Artists could showcase eco-collaborations with sustainable designers (e.g., Florence Welch’s organic cotton flowing gowns) to normalise green luxury on stage.
Costume Design
The creation of clothing specifically for characters or performers to express narrative, mood, or identity.
Sustainable costume design for tours (e.g., Taylor Swift's Eras Tour) could use modular costumes with interchangeable parts to reduce waste across performance legs.
Cultural Dress
Clothing traditions tied to a specific culture’s music practices.
Ethically collaborating with Indigenous artisans for performance dress (instead of appropriating styles) models fashion justice (e.g., AURORA’s Norwegian Sámi inspirations).
Eco-Aesthetics in Music
The artistic use of ecological themes, natural imagery, and environmental advocacy in musical work.
Musicians (e.g., Anohni, Björk) could expand eco-aesthetics into their costumes by using plant-dyed fabrics, bio-textiles, and modular designs aligned with their ecological messages.
Embodied Music Cognition
The study of how bodily sensations, movements, and perceptions influence the experience of music.
Designing sustainable performance clothing that supports freedom of movement, breathability, and sensory feedback deepens the ecological relationship between body, music, and garment.
Ensemble Uniform
Coordinated dress worn by groups like choirs, orchestras, or bands to signify unity.
Ensembles could commission uniforms made from biodegradable fabrics, championing group eco-consciousness (e.g., BTS promoting sustainable uniforms for their choir performances).
Ethnomusicology Attire
Traditional dress styles studied alongside musical practices across cultures.
Collaborative, respectful sourcing and co-creation of ethnomusicology attire preserves cultural value and reduces exploitative production cycles.
Fashion and Identity
How clothing choices express musical identity, genre, and individuality.
Emerging artists (like Clairo or Arlo Parks) could build fashion identities around thrifted, upcycled, or artisanal pieces, aligning brand and values authentically.
Fashion Statements
Bold clothing choices that convey political, social, or personal messages.
Artists can use eco-designed garments (like Billie Eilish’s anti-fur Met Gala look) to make fashion statements about environmental and ethical issues.
Gender Performance in Music
How musicians use dress and style to construct and deconstruct gender identities.
Sustainable fashion allows artists (like Lil Nas X) to explore gender fluidity without being trapped in rapid, wasteful fashion cycles tied to novelty.
Material Culture of Music
The study of objects (instruments, clothes) associated with musical practices.
Sustainable fashion can rethink performance accessories and costumes as material culture artefacts, worthy of maintenance and historical preservation.
Music Video Costume
Clothes specifically designed for music video storytelling and character construction.
Sustainable music videos could prioritise garments rented, repurposed, or designed for post-production reuse (e.g., slow fashion featured in music videos like Beyoncé's Spirit).
Musical Iconography
The study of how visual elements (instruments, clothes) communicate musical meaning.
Sustainable branding might build around eco-symbols—imagine a guitar strap woven from recycled ocean plastics as a music iconography marker.
Operatic Costume
Elaborate costumes worn in opera, often rich in symbolism and historical reference.
Opera houses could establish circular costume systems—renting, preserving, and restoring pieces instead of continually producing new lavish garments.
Performance Aesthetics
The study of how sensory and emotional impact is created in live music settings through visuals, movement, and clothing.
Emphasizing slow, handcrafted aesthetics over mass-produced glitz would reshape performance fashion's sensory language toward sustainability.
Performance Ecology
The conceptualisation of musical performances as ecologies of humans, objects, and environments interacting dynamically.
Viewing tour wardrobes and sets as ecological systems could drive sustainable designs minimizing environmental disruption during musical performances.
Performance Wardrobe
A performer's full collection of costumes for different songs, venues, or settings.
Renting or reworking a performance wardrobe for different stops (like Lorde’s minimalist Solar Power tour) could model low-impact fashion consumption.
Period Costume
Clothing that replicates fashions from specific historical eras, often for authenticity in performances.
Sustainable approaches could use existing vintage or repurposed materials for historical accuracy without producing new waste (e.g., Bridgerton-style tours).
Posthuman Performance
Performance theory that challenges the idea of a stable, autonomous human subject by emphasizing interconnectedness with technology, environment, and non-human agents.
Fashion-tech collaborations in music performances (like Grimes' AI-assisted shows) could prioritise bio-fabricated and zero-waste costumes to embody posthuman ecological ethics.
Rehearsal Clothing
Practical clothes worn during music rehearsals to allow movement and comfort.
Sustainable rehearsal wear could favour organic basics or repairable activewear, encouraging everyday slow fashion habits in the industry.
Relational Aesthetics in Music
Art theory applied to music where the focus shifts from object-based performance to the relationships and encounters it generates.
Sustainable performance fashion could be designed to facilitate tactile, participatory experiences with audiences, blurring lines between wearer and viewer sustainably.
Rock Fashion
The distinctive clothing associated with rock musicians, often symbolizing rebellion or counter-culture.
Sustainable rock fashion revivals (e.g., reworked leather jackets, vintage denim) could reject fast fashion's disposability while preserving rock's anti-mainstream ethos.
Semiotics of Dress
The study of how clothing communicates meaning within musical performance contexts.
Sustainable fashion can strategically code garments to symbolise eco-responsibility visually through fibers, colors, or cuts.
Sound-Image Relation
Analysis of how visual elements and sound interrelate in media such as music videos and live performances.
Eco-designed costumes that visually 'sound' natural—through textures, organic shapes, and earthy palettes—strengthen the sustainable sound-image connection.
Stage Attire
Clothes worn by musicians during live performances to enhance persona and engagement.
Artists could promote upcycled or locally crafted stage attire (e.g., Billie Eilish’s oversized vintage pieces) as a visible stance on sustainability.
Stage Makeup and Hair
Styling choices that complement stage attire and reinforce a performer's visual message.
Eco-certified, cruelty-free, and refillable makeup/hair products used in touring could push the sustainability agenda backstage as well as front-stage.
Symbolic Costume
Clothing that carries layered meanings in performances, enhancing lyrical or thematic content.
Fashion houses could create symbolic costumes from recycled textiles (e.g., Taylor Swift’s 'Willow' performances could use garments evoking nature through fabric reuse).
Tour Merchandise
Clothing and products sold during a tour to fans, often featuring logos, dates, or album art.
Producing tour merch from organic, locally-sourced textiles and offering pre-order systems (to minimise leftover stock) could drastically cut tour-related waste.
Visual Branding
The coordinated use of visual elements (clothes, logos, color schemes) to construct an artist’s public image.
Brands like Taylor Swift’s Folklore era show how visual branding can shift—using slow fashion themes could make eco-identity part of an artist’s visual lexicon.
