For Judith Achumba-Wöllenstein, countering arguments about the frivolity and light-hearted nature of fashion is a common occurrence, particularly since the launch of Hajinsky, a fashion psychology magazine co-founded earlier this year by Achumba-Wöllenstein, Susan E. Jean and Pak Lun Chiu, all graduates of the London College of Fashion’s Masters programme. And while those working in fashion have long resigned themselves to addressing such issues, the same cannot be said for the new and emerging field of fashion psychology, which has the potential to disrupt long-held assumptions and position fashion as a force for change.

While fashion itself has been the subject of a myriad of psychological research in the past, the focus has leaned towards the effects and impressions that it can make on others or on the dehumanising effects that clothing can have on people’s own perceptions and actions. It was only in 2012 that the groundwork for fashion psychology as a discipline was laid. Scientists Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky, the combination of whose names form the portmanteau Hajinsky, coined the term ‘enclothed cognition’ to describe the “systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes.” Achumba-Wöllenstein is all too aware of the negative influence of clothing. She recounts her internship with the EU, an experience she equates to “slowly dying on the inside,” due not only to the formalised and bureaucratic nature of the work and environment, but also the required formal office attire which acted as both a form and expression of oppression, “[A]t the time I was going through a major life change and having to dress in ways that didn’t feel like they resonated with who I was, made every day even more of a struggle.”

Indeed, it is the personal struggle in the quest to reconcile fashion and identity which forms an integral component of Hajinsky’s aim to beneficially influence the well-being of society as a whole. Like many women in particular, both Achumba-Wöllenstein and Jean confess to having a complicated and love-hate relationship with fashion: “[it] is at once so powerful and creative in helping people realise their value and true identity and in the same breath denying this same value to the majority of people,” confesses Achumba-Wöllenstein. The sentiment is echoed by Jean who “love[s] aspects of the fashion that comes to creating and craft but then hate[s] it because it actually feeds into a lot of negativity for people, especially for women and just how they feel about themselves.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both women initially were hesitant to venture into the fashion industry. For Jean, a woman of colour, the lack of diversity presented a major obstacle. “I didn’t feel like I fit into the fashion industry….I didn’t really see anyone that kind of looked like me.” This hesitance led her to pursue a traditional psychology degree before switching to a degree in fashion design. This eventually led to employment in merchandising, an occupation which she refers to as “really mundane.”

Achumba-Wöllenstein on the other hand, struggled “with the notion that fashion didn’t serve a bigger purpose.” In a bid to legitimise her first foray into the industry, she worked as a director of communication for a social fashion startup which used recycled materials to make jewellery, the profits of which were donated to an organisation fighting human trafficking. Indeed, her continued concern for social justice has recently led her to co-founding PHAEDIS, an agency attempting to counteract the hazardous effects of fast fashion by partnering with designers to sell their last season’s collections through the medium of storytelling.

Ultimately, it was the striking injustices of the fashion industry that Achumba-Wöllenstein, Lun Chiu and Jean could no longer ignore and which, in 2017, led them to dig deeper into these issues. Eventually this led to the pursuit of masters programmes at the London College of Fashion, with Achumba-Wöllenstein and Lun Chiu opting for an MA in Psychology for Fashion Professionals and Jean for an MSC in Applied Psychology in Fashion, and eventually the founding of Hajinksy. “I became increasingly passionate about facilitating change not just through fashion…but also to the system of fashion itself,” Achumba-Wöllenstein recounts. Jean recalls feeling like the programme was “an opportunity for me to be a part of something where I could do something positive in the fashion industry.”

It is clear from browsing through the website that Hajinsky doesn’t shy away from challenging preconceived notions and long-held beliefs held dear by the fashion industry, which, Jean states, is “based on how things have always been done without any evidence that they work.” In part, Hajinsky is dedicated to grounding fashion within a scientific discipline to demonstrate how diversity, sustainability and a variety of other issues, can lead to a more inclusive, sustainable and even more commercial viable business model. As Jean points out it is to the detriment of the fashion industry not to include models of different races, ethnicities and body types especially in places like London and New York whose populations are so diverse as “studies have shown that people are drawn to people that look like them, so from a business perspective and a fashion perspective, it’s better to show more people that look like the population to increase sales.”

Jean believes that traditional fashion magazines are “pushing the boat out a bit more slowly,” but the worry remains that these are simply fads, not the start to a larger implementation of lasting change. Instead, change needs to originate from behind the scenes. A large part of her research to date has been interviewing women of colour working in the industry, the findings of which show that once they’re in the company they report finding it difficult to progress and to obtain support. “I think some of the issues in diversity stem from not having diverse voices of influence making decisions on editorials and advertising…when we can get that then we can see a more authentic shift in what a consumer sees.”

Indeed, the importance of equipping consumers with the skills for understanding the psychological effects of exclusion as well as the ability to interrogate the products and images created and perpetuated by the industry is of paramount importance. For Achumba-Wöllenstein, the profound impact of fashion on the environment is taken for granted by most consumers. They “have no idea about how these clothes came into our possession,” be it from the source of the fabric to the person responsible for manufacturing them to the cultural references of the original designs and the ways in which it is marketed to the ‘average’ body type, a classification brought into existence during the industrial revolution to facilitate mass production. It is only by making visible the previously invisible structures of power and raising awareness about the consequences of decisions that new ways of thinking and creating can be explored.

And what has the response been from the industry thus far? Both Achumba-Wöllenstein and Jean report positive and constructive feedback, the basis of which will be used to continue to promote and foster discussion and debate in an industry which has lamentably lost its connection with humanity. “There is a sense of community and a willingness to collaborate and join forces. This is great, because it allows us to create a dialogue with those that we are actually writing for, rather than just functioning as a megaphone promoting our own truths,” enthuses Achumba-Wöllenstein. With truth in today’s society a fraught and often contentious term, the willingness to address the root causes even when Jean admits that “they don’t have all the answers,” rather than simply adding their voices to the litany of criticisms and condemnations, highlights the nobility of their endeavour towards an industry many perceive to be incapable of redemption.