Why Fashion Changes - Essay Example

March 8, 2009 Why Fashion changes The terms ‘fashion’ and ‘change’ are intrinsically correlated. Barnard (1996) defines fashion as a term that can be related to any object or phenomenon that changes over time and is based upon individual collective preferences. Change is therefore inherent in fashion. The objective of his paper is to study why and how fashion changes: what are the factors that stimulate changes in fashion, why they come into play and how exactly do they work. Before we are able to do so however, it is imperative that the concept of ‘fashion’, as applied in this paper, is distinctly defined and made understandable. From the definition of Barnard (1996) it is evident that fashion can mean different things to different people. Kawamura (2005) propounds a sociological approach to fashion that is based on a system of social institutions that produces and nurtures the concept of fashion as well as the phenomenon or practice of fashion. An institutionalized system comprising a persistent network of beliefs, customs and formal procedures form a distinct social organization with the acknowledged focal purpose of creating or producing fashion (Entwistle, 2002). Fashion is dynamic, it keeps changing, it is a target that keeps moving (Crewe, 2001); yet fashion is not just change per se, it has been defined as “institutionalized, systematic change produced by those who are authorized to implement it.” (Kuwamura, 2005, p: 51) Again, it has also to be understood that notwithstanding the fact that fashion undergoes a continuous process of change, the institutions, organizations and firms that form the basis of fashion can be relatively very stable. Some researchers tend to incorporate this dichotomy into their works by differentiating between style and fashion. Style is defined as “one of the main components of group identity A style is the external manifestation of certain underlying values and principles … Style is not just musical taste, ways of dress or speech. It should be seen as a combination of all this elements, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” (Espinosa, 2004, p:1) Fashion, on the other hand, is considered to be the variations in code deliberately made by style insiders to assure loyalty from the members of the group. This implies that fashion changes are superficial changes and do not signify style changes. The followers of a style could in fact follow a fashion while still retaining the original style identity. Finally a distinction is made between fashion and fads. Fads are defined as time distinct fashion trends that change rapidly. Fads are fashion at its most transient. Even though fashion may be hard to define, it is nevertheless immediately recognizable. This is primarily because fashion is a belief system that is largely manifested through clothing, so much so that fashion cannot be well understood without referring to clothes and designers (Kawamura, 2005). Dress then is an obvious indicator of fashion and the continuous change that fashion undergoes. For the purpose of this paper too, clothes and dresses that people wear have been largely taken to be representative of fashion. The way Trends work Trends are the precursors of fashion changes. A trend is characterized by the build-up of awareness of a new fashion innovation or new trait and the willingness of a large section of people to accept the trend as an element of new fashion. Every new fashion is a logical evolution from a precursor bridged by a trend or a set of trends. A trend can be the first indicator of the response to a social change or an expression of a cultural drift. Trends can be set by professional fashion actors such as designers, fashion forecasters, fashion media, and retail buyers; or can originate in different types of social groups such as urban subcultures. A trend itself can evolve through three distinct stages. At the initial Fringe stage an innovation develops and the trendiest of consumers and fashion firms begins to participate in the innovation. At the second Trendy stage awareness of the trend grows rapidly because it is embraced by early adopters in addition to the initial innovators. This increases the visibility of the trend and the path-breaking brands and retailers in fashion try the new concept. At the final Mainstream stage many of the conservative population adopts the trend thereby further increasing visibility and corporations and brands cash in on the growing demand for trend. A new fashion thus sets in. Tracking trends can reveal the diffusion of a fashion change across various segments of a society; consequently, the movement of trends can lead to the causes or point of origin of fashion change. The Mechanism of Change Changes in fashion are obviously directly related to the varying tastes of people. The tastes of people can be influenced by a wide variety of random events such as war, economic recession, change in the nature of work, advent of a new technology or even the emergence of a new type of music. A war or overall economic hardships could render expensive fashions vulgar and induce changes that are more austere. A new technology, such as the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution sweeping across the world has made cell phones and laptops almost a part of a person’s wardrobe. The possession of a cutting edge cell phone or laptop could be a fashion statement in its own right. As more and more women went to jobs, the flowing dresses of the Victorian era gave way to the more practical pants, skirts and shorts. What however is to be taken into account is that the reasons behind fashion change may have themselves changed as the world evolved from an agrarian-farming economy to a consumer-based economy controlled by large multinationals and corporate houses. A look at the history of fashion provides ample evidence of this change. From the very beginning however, fashion has been a way of determining the class, sex and gender, status and power, and culture of a person in a very nonverbal manner. Fashion was a way to categorize people. It still remains so. There can be many factors behind a particular fashion. Any change in these factors could result in a change in fashion. For example, why do people wear dresses? Drive or need, motivation and instinct were cited as the three reasons for which people wore dresses. Ryan (1966) gave four instinct theories related to fashion in dresses. The first theory of modesty suggested that clothing is used to cover up sexual organs or body parts. Evidently it is considered wrong to expose sexual organs to anyone other than the mate. Contrastingly, Immodesty was another instinct theory that suggested that dresses are worn in a manner to draw attraction to the parts of the body covered, as a sexual enticement. A third theory proponed that dresses are worn for protection against weather or supernatural elements. Finally the Decorative or Ornamental theory postulated that dresses are aesthetic expressions and could include jewelry or paintings on the skin. Fashion would thus depend on the comparative importance that each of these theories were given at a particular period of time. Any change in these comparative importance ratings could result in a consequent change in fashion. Fashion and Social Diffentiation The relationship between fashion and the socio-economic status of an individual has also been another very important inducement to fashion change. Barnard (1996, p: 98) states that the real seat of fashion is to be found amongst the upper class. In this case, elements of fashion in one’s attire are used to distinguish the difference in status between the upper class and the lower class. Thorstein Veblen’s theory of the Leisure Class was based on a similar premise that people chose their clothing primarily to indicate their status to others. According to Veblen, the leisure class lives in the ‘proper’ style by displaying the possession of wealth, by conspicuous leisure, by conspicuous consumption and waste, by rating goods and services in proportion to their expensiveness, by wearing clothing that shows they could do no useful work, and by engaging in many other practices of a futile nature designed to show that they do not have to work for a living. It therefore entails that it is the upper class alone who are responsible for fashion change. The lower classes copy the trends from the upper class. The renowned theorist George Simmel asserts that imitation is intrinsic to fashion, and people imitate others either out of reverence or to assert equality (Lauer, 1981, p: 3). This has been termed as the ‘trickle-down theory’. Once the lower classes copied the trends and a distinct fashion emerged, it became imperative for the upper class to seek a change in fashion to maintain the status differentiation through the fashion of their dresses. This would result in a continuous cyclic change in fashion. The phenomenon of fashion change being induced by socio-economic differentiations and status was however to be overshadowed by the much more powerful force of consumerism and the joint manipulations of big business houses which assumed control enough initiate fashion changes for the sake of high sales and profits. Fashion change crossed over to a new era of business manipulations. Nevertheless elements of the old factors of change still remain hidden under each and every fashion innovation. Consumerism In the new world of consumerism the forces that drive fashion change have changed radically. The old class distinction has been eclipsed by the six sigma syndrome which can be defined has both creating and meeting consumer demands, tastes and requirements. Fashion has emerged as a very lucrative industry. Though fashion is still not a one-sided affair controlled entirely by the industry, it nevertheless has the dominant say in any fashion change. The people for whom the fashion is created are increasingly not able to contribute their personal preferences either individually or as social groups because of the scale and extent that the fashion industry now encompasses. In practice, fashion is now “a set of seasonally driven colours, styles, and motifs that are combined and mixed in a huge variety of ways by a wide range of parties in order to appeal to targeted consumer demographics. This is not restricted to designers sending dresses down the catwalk, but also includes car manufacturers, furniture producers and mobile handset manufacturers, among many others”. (Drury et al., 2005, p:4) The Fashion Industry As a commercial field, fashion can be conceptualized as a system comprising interrelated activities bound together both in time and space. The fashion industry consists of two basic elements: material production of the product and immaterial production of beliefs and signs as to what would look good or beautiful at a given time. These two elements meet in a defined space to produce fashion. In the case of garments, it is the material production of garments and the immaterial production of the notions and ideas of design that could lead to good-looking clothes or dresses. The economic structure of the fashion industry is therefore partly based on the production of physical goods and partly on the development of symbolic and aesthetic value. The aesthetic value is still very important, but with branding being considered as the principal innovative arena and strategy, the organizational structure of fashion has undergone changes. The marketing process of fashion brands now gains equal importance with the design of the products. Innovative marketing strategies of various brands are now on the verge of compelling consumers to adopt new fashion trends that companies develop. The diffusion of trends has changed radically. The elite class no longer drives fashion change as before, they too are treated as consumers to be impressed by new fashion that has been developed. They are no more the innovators but could still be the leading adopters of fashion trends. In the modern world products are not translated to fashion unless they enjoy the support of business institutions. Since actors sharing similar standards and norms constitute these institutions, they can also be termed as social institutions. Brands Brands can be defined as meticulously-labeled information packages developed with the objective of helping consumers choose the product over a wide range of other similar products. The information that branding provides can however be highly biased. In practice brand information may comprise logos, slogans and marketing information with the sole purpose of impressing the gullible consumer. With a surfeit of brands available in the market, he ultimate object of each product is to carve out a niche for itself, and what better way to achieve that than to claim to be a new fashion trend or a fashion by itself. Fashion is more about fulfilling emotional appeal than meeting basic needs. Even though the physical needs behind most products can be fulfilled at very low costs, there is no limit to emotional needs which can also be created and marketed. An overwhelming majority of brands try and take advantage of this immaterial need. The emphasis is therefore of the symbolic value rather than on the material value of a product. “…branding techniques might be the most obvious ways in which symbolic value is produced. Brands are the result of a process whereby one attempts to charge a product (or set of products) with ethereal qualities: qualities that primarily function as marketing arguments. A brand’s value is thus related to the way people end up thinking and feeling about it and the product it is linked to. The aim of branding is to produce an almost indistinguishable link between the character of an object and its branded image or form.” (Hauge, 2007, p:13) Branding relates to personification of products by maintaining a delicate balance between different economic values such as quality, utility, symbolic and cultural worth. So much so, that the fashion industry is now dominated by an over-emphasis on building brand and brand loyalty in the consumer-producer relationship. And the most vital aspect of brand building is the way the brand meaning is diffused through advertisement. The brand meaning is not delivered through sales people and marketing managers, but is socially negotiated through reciprocal, socially embedded processes. (Hauge, 2007, p:17) The result could not only be fashion change, but even the formation of brand-oriented social groups. It has been suggested that brands build customer loyalty in a manner very similar to the way cults initiate followers. People come together to give additional meaning to their lives. Strong bonds play on the emotional aspects of consumers by adding symbolic value to their products. Once a brand captures the emotional loyalty of consumers, its products make an overall fashion statement for the consumer, and loyalty is enthused beyond reason. Conclusion Despite strong market forces in operation, Crane (2000) is of the opinion that the production of fashion is fundamentally determined by two factors: the nature of fashion organization which affects what is developed and is made available to consumers, and how consumers’ feedback affects fashion. The ‘trickle-down’ method of diffusion of fashion described by theorists such as Viblen and Simmel seems to have been replaced by diffusion methods that ‘trickle-up’ or ‘trickle-across’ as stated by later theorists like Bordieu. In a multinational corporate environment, fashion businesses try to pick up the pulse of the people and differentiate between the good and the ugly. The Internet and the World Wide Web, along with faster means of communication and better education facilities have all turned the world into a global village. People are now exposed to multiple cultures and the varied fashion that each of them endorse. Fashion, unlike other cultural elements such as language, can be picked up and adapted very easily. This could also result in change in fashion. However in the context of high commercialization of products and fashion as an industry, commercial fashion organizations are beginning to play the role of driver of fashion changes more and more. They employ professionals such as fashion designers and market analysts and strategies such as product branding to create and diffuse fashion trends. Nevertheless, the basic fact remains that that in order to create a successful brand and then usher in a new fashion, the tastes, preferences and mood of the consumer has to be judged accurately. And that is exactly how social groups or even the common person are still instrumental in bringing about fashion changes. References 1. Barnard, M., 1996, Fashion as communication, London, Routledge. 2. Crewe, L., 2001, The besieged body: geographies of retailing and consumption, Progress in Human Geography 25(4): 629-640. 3. Drury, S., Lewis, M., Svanteson, S., Eriksson, B., Wiking, J., 2005, Fashion and Stylr in the Mobile Handset Industry, ARCchart Ltd, London, UK. 4. Entwistle, J., 2002, The aesthetic economy: The production of value in the field of fashion modelling, Journal of Consumer Culture 2(3): 317-339. 5. Espinosa, H, Jose, 2004, Changes in Style and Changes in Fashion, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge. 6. Hauge, A., 2007, Dedicated Followers of Fashion, An Economic Geographic Study of the Swedish Fashion Industry, Uppsala University, ISBN 978-91-506-1952-2. 7. Kawamura, Y., 2005, Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies, Oxford, Berg. Read More