The fleeting popularity of these seemingly impractical styles raises an obvious question:
How do fashion trends catch on?
People who claim that ideas spread like viruses have a simple answer. They say mere imitation is responsible for the way fashion trends go from unknown to mainstream. In the The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell claims that the analogy of ideas spreading like viruses has remarkable explanatory power.
Gladwell says:
"The best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."
Maybe he's right. I'm sure some parts of the fashion cycle are driven by observation and imitation. But I think most messages, ideas, and fashions don't really spread like viruses. They spread more like interconnected objects in an ecosystem. In ecosystems, when one thing changes, it affects everything else.
When a style becomes popular among the "cool kids," there will always be a cadre of angsty rebels there to react with a fashion of their own. They’ll wear their ball caps backwards or to the side. Then the cool kids steal that new look, forcing the rebels to respond yet again. Out of this competitive drive to set oneself apart from others, new trends are formed. This is called anti-fashion.
To learn more about this process, I talked to a fashion designer who has worked for Anthropologie, American Eagle, Mossimo, and other well-known fashion brands.
Her name is Bernadette Paolucci.
The garments she makes have been on countless first dates, job interviews, and rollercoasters. Her work has even appeared in mainstream pop culture: the actress Alexis Bledel wore a top she designed for Anthropologie in the Netflix reboot of Gilmore Girls.
Bernadette describes her personal style as a quirky mix of nostalgia and playfulness. She expresses her singular look through an extensive wardrobe of skirts, dresses, high heels, sweaters, and T-shirts curated over a lifetime of visits to thrift stores, flea markets, and events like the legendary bi-annual textile and antique show in Brimfield, Massachusetts.
To Bernadette, fashion is a way of setting her apart from others and expressing her unique identity.
"I always try to stand out. At least a little bit. Not in a crazy way—but I want to look different, in a cute way. I want to be seen as professional. Fashion-forward," Bernadette says.
The types of clothes we wear can show that we're different from other people.
This is the logic at work behind the pricing strategies of breathtakingly expensive brands like Louis Vuitton and CHANEL. Since only a select few can afford to purchase a $26,000 Burberry satchel, the woman who carries one broadcasts her exclusivity and uniqueness to anyone who pays attention and is “in the know.”
And as much as clothing choices show that we're different, they also demonstrate that we belong to a group. The woman with the bag that costs as much as a new car is simultaneously signaling that she is distinct—and also part of an elite group of people who appreciate expensive goods produced by luxury brands.
"Most people want to wear what everyone else is wearing so they can blend in. But some people are trendsetters and are always looking for things they've never seen before, trying to stand out," Bernadette explains.
As Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter explain in their book Nation of Rebels, "distinction always involves inclusion and exclusion. It involves re-affirming one's membership in the superior in-group and, at the same time, disavowing membership in the inferior out-group."
Let's see what this looks like in action.
This model shows what happens when a certain type of person (cool guys) doesn't want to be associated with too many people that look like them. The nerds, on the other hand, don't mind being around other nerds. There's safety in numbers, after all.
Here's the model.
To change the assumptions in the model, just click pause, change the settings on the right, hit reset, and play again.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
This social dynamic underscores why the idea that fashion trends spread like viruses is wholly insufficient:
It doesn't account for people's motivations. We don't blindly copy the attitudes, behaviors, and styles of others. We actively choose which people we want to associate with and ignore everyone else.
Trends become really popular, thrive for a little bit, and ultimately succumb to their own popularity.
Take the recent hipster fashion trend, for instance. (Think ripped jeans and flannel button-down shirts.)
Bernadette says:
"Most fashion trends start out as anti-fashion. When big fashion companies notice an anti-fashion trend, like the hipster look, they try to turn it into a bigger trend. They market it and then they kill it. That's the cycle. It starts as a negative fashion reaction and becoming this thing. Then it goes mainstream and it dies.”
Once it was established, the hipster trend did likely spread at least partly from person-to-person, as individuals observed other chic people wearing ripped jeans and were motivated to find and purchase those products. But they didn’t copy the look of just anybody. They imitated the people in their social group.
They wanted to dress like those bleeding-edge hipsters, because those hipsters had something they identified with (or aspired to). Maybe it had something to do with the rebellious spirit of the look. Or maybe it was because the ripped jean aesthetic was congruent with a key part of the hipster ethos: the attitude that “perfect” things are inauthentic. To hipsters, authenticity is all that matters.
This is another reason that shows why the viral analogy isn't the right way to think about the spread of fashion trends. In the real world, we don’t get to choose which viruses we become infected with. But we can choose the types of fashion trends we adopt or reject, and the groups we choose to embrace or oppose.
The analogy of an ecosystem is far more robust. The spread of fashion trends is more akin to the state of actions and reactions we see in ecosystems. When an ecosystem is healthy, it reaches a state of approximate equilibrium. When one thing changes (say, the the population of sheep), it causes another thing to change (like a decline to the wolf population, which depend on the sheep for sustenance). Every change, no matter how small, sparks a reaction somewhere else.
Next, let's look at some examples.
Lots of things can effect the fragile state of equilibrium in an ecosystem. This happens with invasive plants take over an area of land, killing everything that gets in its path.
Let's look at a simple model of this phenomenon. Here's the key:
And here's the model.
Click on any square to start "planting" sunflowers. To change the assumptions in the model, adjust the parameters on the right.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
Next, let's look at a model where everything is going right.
In this model, rain causes sunflowers to grow, which are then pollinated by bees, which help keep the circle of sunflower life going. Here's the key:
Click on any square to create some rain. (Hint: You can drag your cursor over the squares, too!)
But the state of this ecosystem is fragile. Adjust the parameters on the right to see how you can change this ecosystem.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
The ecosystem model isn't perfect.
But it allows us look at the ways ideas spread in a more realistic and nuanced way.
To learn more about how ideas really spread, read more installments in this series.
To change the assumptions in the model, just click pause, change the settings on the right, hit reset, and play again.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
Trends become really popular, thrive for a little bit, and ultimately succumb to their own popularity.
Take the recent hipster fashion trend, for instance. (Think ripped jeans and flannel button-down shirts.)
Bernadette says:
"Most fashion trends start out as anti-fashion. When big fashion companies notice an anti-fashion trend, like the hipster look, they try to turn it into a bigger trend. They market it and then they kill it. That's the cycle. It starts as a negative fashion reaction and becoming this thing. Then it goes mainstream and it dies.”
Once it was established, the hipster trend did likely spread at least partly from person-to-person, as individuals observed other chic people wearing ripped jeans and were motivated to find and purchase those products. But they didn’t copy the look of just anybody. They imitated the people in their social group.
They wanted to dress like those bleeding-edge hipsters, because those hipsters had something they identified with (or aspired to). Maybe it had something to do with the rebellious spirit of the look. Or maybe it was because the ripped jean aesthetic was congruent with a key part of the hipster ethos: the attitude that “perfect” things are inauthentic. To hipsters, authenticity is all that matters.
This is another reason that shows why the viral analogy isn't the right way to think about the spread of fashion trends. In the real world, we don’t get to choose which viruses we become infected with. But we can choose the types of fashion trends we adopt or reject, and the groups we choose to embrace or oppose.
The analogy of an ecosystem is far more robust. The spread of fashion trends is more akin to the state of actions and reactions we see in ecosystems. When an ecosystem is healthy, it reaches a state of approximate equilibrium. When one thing changes (say, the the population of sheep), it causes another thing to change (like a decline to the wolf population, which depend on the sheep for sustenance). Every change, no matter how small, sparks a reaction somewhere else.
Next, let's look at some examples.
Lots of things can effect the fragile state of equilibrium in an ecosystem. This happens with invasive plants take over an area of land, killing everything that gets in its path.
Let's look at a simple model of this phenomenon. Here's the key:
And here's the model.
Click on any square to start "planting" sunflowers. To change the assumptions in the model, adjust the parameters on the right.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
Next, let's look at a model where everything is going right.
In this model, rain causes sunflowers to grow, which are then pollinated by bees, which help keep the circle of sunflower life going. Here's the key:
Click on any square to create some rain. (Hint: You can drag your cursor over the squares, too!)
But the state of this ecosystem is fragile. Adjust the parameters on the right to see how you can change this ecosystem.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
The ecosystem model isn't perfect.
But it allows us look at the ways ideas spread in a more realistic and nuanced way.
To learn more about how ideas really spread, read more installments in this series.
Bernadette says:
The analogy of an ecosystem is far more robust. The spread of fashion trends is more akin to the state of actions and reactions we see in ecosystems. When an ecosystem is healthy, it reaches a state of approximate equilibrium. When one thing changes (say, the the population of sheep), it causes another thing to change (like a decline to the wolf population, which depend on the sheep for sustenance). Every change, no matter how small, sparks a reaction somewhere else.
Next, let's look at some examples.
Lots of things can effect the fragile state of equilibrium in an ecosystem. This happens with invasive plants take over an area of land, killing everything that gets in its path.
Let's look at a simple model of this phenomenon. Here's the key:
And here's the model.
Click on any square to start "planting" sunflowers. To change the assumptions in the model, adjust the parameters on the right.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
Next, let's look at a model where everything is going right.
In this model, rain causes sunflowers to grow, which are then pollinated by bees, which help keep the circle of sunflower life going. Here's the key:
Click on any square to create some rain. (Hint: You can drag your cursor over the squares, too!)
But the state of this ecosystem is fragile. Adjust the parameters on the right to see how you can change this ecosystem.
HELLO mobile users: This part of this project doesn't work very well on small screens. Click here to try it anyway.
The ecosystem model isn't perfect.
But it allows us look at the ways ideas spread in a more realistic and nuanced way.
To learn more about how ideas really spread, read more installments in this series.
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