Divergence of Upper Materials to Specific Footwear Construction: Seeking a Culture of Sustainable Material Solicitation

Footwear is equally a fashion and function apparel item constructed of leather and non-leather materials. This research aims to investigate the selection of materials for footwear fabrication corresponding to shoe functionality and fashion aspects of consumers. Here, an attempt is taken to build a network among the consumer perception of cherry-picking shoes, sustainable fashion, and the physicomechanical behavior of versatile upper materials focusing on leather and non-leather. A psychometric rating scale is used to rate the relationship of sustainability attitude regarding both materials and users. The chosen materials are leather, pleather, and fabric. The leather items are suede, semi-aniline, and corrected grain leather whereas non-leather materials are canvas cotton, PUCF, and PVCF. The randomly selected materials with a thickness of 1.2-2.4 mm for the dress (oxford), casual, and boot shoe fabrication were brought under rigorous physicomechanical tests following ISO and SATRA methods. Besides, a quantitative statistical analysis of psychophysical material information test was carried out among 132 valid respondents. Though cent-percent of finished leather and most of the canvas fabric samples have satisfied standards of physicomechanical characteristics whereas pleather was underneath. The weighted score for green materials solicitation for sustainable use was 2.5 ± 0.01on a psychometric rating scale of 5.00, quite unsatisfactory due to a deficiency of materials knowledge among consumers. Moreover, the Pearson correlation coefficient is about 0.99152 and a p-value of 0.03 0.05 has been observed which provided strong evidence of a statistically significant positive correlation among the variables on the sustainability attitude scale of material cherry-picking.