Baruch College Professor Conducts Research on How Changing Your Clothes Can Change Your Life

July 9, 2026

Small-town girl moves to the big city, gets a glow-up, and changes her life. No, it’s not the story of The Devil Wears Prada or “Don’t Stop Believin’”—it’s research by Zicklin School of Business assistant professor Tanuka Ghoshal, PhD, published in The Journal of Consumer Psychology.

In “From kurtas to crop tops: A theory of postliminal self-transformation,” Dr. Ghoshal and her co-author study the process of profound change undergone by young Indian women from small towns and villages who move to large cities, mainly to work in call centers.

“These are brave women doing difficult things,” Ghoshal says, recounting stories of women who shed their traditional dress along with arranged marriages and domestic servitude. “They became my inspiration.”

Through interviews with 12 rural women who had moved to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Chennai, Ghoshal (who teaches in the Allen G. Aaronson Department of Marketing and International Business) studies how they “use fashion accessories—shoes, hairstyles, makeup, and so on—to mimic what they see around them, and how ultimately this external transformation results in an internal, deeper one.”

In the big cities, the newcomers observe other women living free of marital and parental expectations and emulate them, first by dressing like them. Ghoshal highlights, for example, the story of a woman who experimented with blue jeans and found they gave her “the confidence of a man.”

Ghoshal’s research dispels the popular view that consumer products like clothing and makeup are inherently frivolous, showing instead how they can become instruments of self-empowerment. As Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer (and famed Zicklin School dropout) told The New York Times, “I don’t design clothes. I design dreams.”

*** This copy was written by the Zicklin School. Visit the Zicklin School of Business to read about its undergraduate and graduate academic programs.