Abstract:

Objective Due to limited research on aesthetic evaluation of dress drape, this study aimed to analyze the relationship between fabric drapeability and aesthetics of draped clothing, taking cheongsam as the research object. Forty female graduate students majoring in fashion participated in the research, and both subjective and objective evaluations of cheongsam drape aesthetics were carried out.

Method In order to differentiate the fabric drape property from the dress drape aesthetics, this study involved two experiments, one being silk fabric drapeability test and the other visual sensory evaluation of cheongsam drape aesthetics, so as to establish the relationship between both based on analyzing these two experiment results. Fabric drapeability testing and garment manufacturing were conducted in the virtual environment in CLO 3D 7.0. Various drape indices of fabrics were identified utilizing image processing technology through MatLab R2024a. The subjective and objective methods were adopted to evaluate the acethetics of cheongsam drape. The subjective evaluation included the emotion and judgment factors based on the PAD model and aesthetic experience model of Leder et al. The SMI ETG 2w eye-tracking equipment in German was served as an objective method. Finally, cluster analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were applied to the subjective and objective data using SPSS 26.0.

Results Cluster analysis was carried out to classify fabric samples and cheongsam samples. Fabric samples were divided into four clusters, whereas cheongsam samples were divided into three clusters. The evaluation criteria for the drape performance of silk fabrics were not the same as those for assessing the draping aesthetics of cheongsams. Spearman correlation analysis and regression analysis were employed to analyze the correlation between fabric drape indexes and subjective evaluation. Specifically, the drape coefficient exhibited a significant negative correlation with drape perception and fluttering property, while the drape degree, aesthetic coefficient, shape coefficient, fit coefficient, and comprehensive aesthetic degree were significantly positively correlated with drape perception, fluttering property, and curved acethetics. Moreover, the correlation between these fabric drape indexes and judgment factor was also significant. In addition, Spearman correlation analysis was employed to analyse the correlation between eye-tracking indices and subjective evaluation. The result showed that 1) fixation duration of the area of interest (AOI) for sleeves was significantly positively correlated with pleasure, arousal, and emotion factor; 2) fixation duration of the AOI for bust was significantly positively correlated with drape ability, fluttering property, and judgment factor, and fixation count was significantly positively correlated with judgment factor; 3) fixation duration of the AOI for hip was significantly negatively correlated with dominance, drape perception, flowing perception, curved acethetics, judgment factor, and synthesis scores, and fixation count was significantly negatively correlated with pleasure, arousal, dominance, drape perception, flowing perception, curved acethetics, emotion factor, judgment factor, and synthesis scores, and average fixation duration was only significantly negatively correlated with judgment factor; 4) average fixation duration of the AOI for hem was significantly positively correlated with curved acethetics, emotion factor, and synthesis scores. An evaluation model for predicting the aesthetic synthesis score was constructed based on fabric drape indexes and fixation count through regression analysis. Validation demonstrated that the model's mean absolute deviation remained below 8%, thereby confirming its accuracy.

Conclusion An exploratory study is conducted to evaluate the acethetics of cheongsam drape using eye-tracking technology. An evaluation model was created for acethetics of cheongsam drape based on drape indexes, subjective evaluation, and eye-tracking data. The subjective evaluation includes both the emotion factor and the judgment factor from which the synthesis score is generated, proving the effectiveness of PAD model and aesthetic experience model of Leder et al in the research of cheongsam drape beauty. The drape indexes of the fabrics are significantly correlated with the judgment factor. Drape coefficient can negatively predict the judgment factor, while the drape degree, aesthetic coefficient, shape coefficient, fit coefficient, and comprehensive aesthetic degree can positively predict the judgment factor. Eye-tracking technology is introduced for the first time to evaluate the aesthetics of cheongsam drape. The result shows that the eye-tracking data is significantly correlated with the emotion factor and synthesis score. Fixation count of a sum of AOIs for the waist, hip, and hem negatively predicts synthesis score, while drape indexes except for the drape coefficient positively predict synthesis score.

Key words: virtual drapeability, eye tracking, visual sensory evaluation, emotion measurement, cheongsam drape aesthetics