In Fashion chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Movement of Fashion

Accelerating factors

  • Widespread buying power: more people with the financial means to respond to fashion change
  • Leisure time: more time to buy and enjoy fashion
  • Increased education: more people have broadened horizons and have new interests/want, more education means higher paying jobs to satisfy wants
  • Improved status of women: women have more discretionary income and influencing speed of fashion cycles by spending
  • Technological advances: good are sped to retail stores by land, air, and sea more lapidly, goods available almost instantly
  • Sales promotion: mobile aids expose public to never-ending procession of new fashions, sales promo can greatly influence fashion success by telling people it exists
  • Seasonal change: consumer responses can tell manufacturers and retailers what will appeal in a season

Retarding factors

Discourage people from adopting incoming styles or encourage them to continue using styles that may decline

  • Habit and custom: slows adopting of new skirt lengths, silhouettes, necklines, or colors, easy for individual to let habit take over
  • Religion: religious leaders tended to associate fashion with temptation and urged their followers to turn their backs on both, today is less of a restraining influence on fashion
  • Sumptuary laws: regulate what we can and cannot purchase (sumptuary laws require that children's sleepwear be flame retardant)
  • Reductions in Consumers’ buying power: buying power increase = fashion cycles speed up and vise versa

Recurring Fashions

Styles reoccur with adaptations that suit the times in which they reappear

  • Occasionally an entire look is reborn (Yves Saint Laurent resurrected 30’s and 40’s hollywood glamor in the 70’s)
  • 3 basic silhouettes always follow each other in 100 year sequence (bell-shaped, back fullness, and straight)

Playing the Apparel Game

Erogenous: sexually stimulating

Rules of the game

1st rule: fashion emphasis does not flit from one area to another, a particular area of the body is emphasized until every bit of excitement has been exhausted

2nd rule: only certain parts of the body can be exposed at any given time (floor-length dress with plunging neckline, high neckline with mini skirts, turtlenecks on sleeveless fashions)

3rd rule: fashion attention must always go forwards

Predicting Fashion Movement

To bring excitement and flair to their segment of merchandising, producers, designers, and retailers must have a well-defined plan and follow the movement of general fashion preferences.

Steps to develop a fashion forecast:

  1. Identify facts about past trends and forecasts
  2. Determine the cause of change in the past
  3. Investigate the difference between past forecasts and actual behavior
  4. Analyze factors likely to affect trends in the future
  5. Apply forecasting tools and techniques, using accuracy and reliability
  6. Study the forecast continually to determine reasons for significant deviations from expected plans
  7. Revise forecast when necessary

Identifying trends

Designers, manufacturers, and merchants try to recognize each fashion trend to determine how widespread it is and whether it is moving toward or away maximum fashion acceptance

At introductions, retailers will stock and promote item, when response levels off retailer will introduce updated similar styles, if retailers have predicted downturn in demand accurately they will have less overstock

Sources of Data

Merchants can keep “instant” records on sales, inventories, new fashion testing, and a myriad of other contributing factors that aid the fashion merchandising process, also keep an eye on what customers are wearing

Can use hand-earned sales experience and rely on judgment of others as well as your own

Interpreting Influential Factors

From collected data, patterns are identifiable

Recent study revealed 25% of consumers are willing to pay more for a personalized product/service

Crowdsourcing: using the many social possibilities of the web to either create something or solve a problem

Mass customization: companies that have used technology and factory production rather than traditional craftsmanship to produce a custom product at a popular price

Desktop manufacturing: digital printers can create 3-d objects by fusing layers of plastic or metal

Current events

News of what is going on the the country/world can have a long-term or short-term influence on consumers and affect their responses to a fashion

Prophetic styles: interesting new styles that are still in the introduction phase of their fashion cycle

  • Usually taken up by the socially prominent or by the flamboyantly young

Theories of fashion adoption

Three primary theories have been advanced to explain “social contagion” or spread of fashion adoption

Downward-flow theory

Horizontal- flow theory

Upward-flow theory

Fashion leaders

  • Innovators and influentials
  • Royalty
  • The rich
  • The famous
  • Athletes

Reasons for following fashion:

  • Feelings of insecurity
  • Admiration
  • Lack of interest
  • Ambivalence
  • Varying rates of response

Designers and self expression

  • Forward- looking designers recognize a consumer’s desire for self-expression

Paradox of conformity and individuality

  • People seek both conformity and individuality in fashion