The adoption process is often triggered by trendsetters and driven forward through sartorial copying for the purpose of connection with fluctuating definitions of status. The element of delay or time lag between the fashion forward and the fashion tardy is central in achieving the effect of distinction.
Being fashionably on time has become much easier with industrialized production and globalized consumption of fashion, and as a consequence achieving and maintaining distinction have become equally difficult.
This has caused the fashionably inclined to reconsider methods of distinction that are more demonstratively ambiguous than Kennedy’s deliberations over a top hat as a way of maintaining distinction longer.
But rather than representing fashion mutiny through dismantling the hierarchy of fashion, these new strategies may be seen as a rediscovery of what fashion is and can be within a social context.
The following text outlines the development of key terms with regard to fashion flows within a historical framework to provide a theoretical context of how the social mechanisms of distinction have been adjusted over time. The brief description of these fashion flows constitute the conditions for fashioning identity as something consumers chose to either engage with or keep away from.
The development of ambiguous social currency relies on a partial dismissal of James Laver’s (1899–1975) early description of fashion, namely, as “the dress of idleness and pleasure” (Laver 1946: 114). This approach saw fashion as an indulgence for the privileged few. In the fashion industry, the production of luxury was given more structure with the rise of haute couture that is often credited to Charles Frederick Worth (1825–1895) who founded House of Worth in 1858 in Paris.
With Worth and haute couture, fashion was loosely organized in biannual seasons forming a fashion cycle that accommodated the process of distinction and imitation later described by Simmel. This created a vertical flow according to which the higher classes were copied by the lower motivated by status aspirations.
The hierarchy of price and prestige characterized the period in fashion history from 1850 to 1950 where the main focus was on handmade couture and industrially produced copies of couture that created a vertical dynamic between the social layers of society. Much of the early work on fashion as a social practice emphasized class and wealth as the primary agents of status claims.
Fashion worked as a vehicle of conveying status aspirations and social affiliations through symbolic meaning but also material value. Already from the beginning of twentieth century, there were signs of a gradual democratization understood as a development from wealthy women being the fashion leaders toward a premise where material luxury was not necessarily the only imaginable form of social currency.
This process was promoted by the development in garment production that made the copies cheaper, quicker to make, and available to a wider group of consumers. In the twenty-first century, men are not obliged to wear powdered wigs and women have been freed from the cages of the crinolines and corsets. Individuality and freedom are admired values that can be communicated through the way we chose to look.
However, fashion still runs on the social power structures, and conspicuous consumption is still in operation. The vertical flow in Kennedy’s checking his hat, so to speak, that was seen to spread to the masses is at a structural level similar to the frenzy of getting your feet in a pair of musician Kanye West YEEZY Adidas sneakers (2015) that will make some people camp outside a store for days.
Exclusivity either through price or access is still at play, with celebrities in the lead, including actors and singers but also stylists, fashion editors, and bloggers. In this hyper-visual age, celebrities have come closer to their fans through social media and in limited edition capsule collections with fast fashion increasing their power and maintaining the vertical flow of fashion.
In 1961, the mood was young and liberated in the Western world. Fashion flirted with freedom of mind and body rejecting what was perceived as the restrictions and stuffiness of older generations. Youth became the prime social currency in fashion that as a consequence was considered to follow a horizontal flow.
In a critique of the vertical flow theory, Charles W. King argued that fashion as “social contagion” (1963) moves across socioeconomic groups simultaneously in a market where consumers have the freedom to choose from all styles. Rather than the economic elite playing the key role in directing fashion adoption, it was the influentials who inspired change not vertically across strata but horizontally within specific social affiliations: “Personal transmission of fashion information moves primarily horizontally rather than vertically in the class hierarchy” (King 1963: 112).
King was foresighted in suggesting his idea of “simultaneous adoption” well before the digital mediation of fashion information, the rise of everyman as fashion leader—from blogger to celebrity designer—and the revolution in style, price, and availability of fast fashion.
The postwar licensing practice of designers contributed to paving the way for this development by pushing fashion in a democratic direction in the form of ready-to-wear, which was already on the rise in the United States. The development toward a more mutual dialogue between the dresser and dressed was gradual.
Christian Dior (1905–1957) was one of the first designers who understood how to take advantage of the rise of consumer culture that came in the wake of World War II. He made lucrative licensing deals for parts of his collections and lines of side products such as makeup, stockings, and bijouterie for especially the American market that was booming at the time. Licensing was good for business and an effective way to spread the brand Dior. Exclusivity as both a product and experience was opened to the masses because more people had access to the haute couture brand Dior if not the actual haute couture.
Although licensing was an accepted and institutionalized practice, copying was difficult to control, and despite the fact that, for instance, Christian Dior released mass-produced retail collections, copies of his creations were often in department stores before the couture customers got their hands on the original. This was a step in the direction of reorganizing and perhaps ultimately dismantling the hierarchy of fashion where traditionally only members of the social elite were in a position to both influence and pursue status play through fashion.
Ready-to-wear became an important factor in the changed relationship between production and practice, away from the designer as auteur and toward the designer as interpreter of street and youth culture. As opposed to the couture designers who produced ready-to-wear as a subline, a new generation of designers such as Mary Quant and André Courrèges beginning in the late 1950s made only ready-to-wear.
Mary Quant and André Courrèges were ambassadors of the horizontal flow in fashion where the trendsetters were not necessarily the social elite. These designers contributed to making standard sizes in fashionable clothing more widespread and also worked toward dissolving the boundaries between casual and evening wear according to the philosophy that modern women did not have time to change out of their work clothes before going out at night.
Their fashion ambitions were more democratic in their attempt to make fashionable clothes available to women regardless of economic status. This vision was reflected in the price as well as design and functionality of the clothes.
As Quant puts it in her autobiography: “There was a time when clothes were a sure sign of a woman’s social position and income group. But now, snobbery has gone out of fashion, and in our shops you will find duchesses jostling with typists to buy the same dress” (Quant 1966: 75).
This approach to fashion testifies to the step that took place in the 1960s from hemline to attitude that Elizabeth Wilson has described as the “snobbery of uniqueness” (2003: 193). The same year as Kennedy’s Inauguration, the aptly named shift-dress materialized the attitude of the time. The sleeveless dress with straight lines and minimal detailing allowed for freedom of movement suitable for the growing youth culture.
As a visual expression, the shift was a paraphrase of the 1920s flapper dress as well as of the 1957 Balenciaga Sack-dress. The loose shift dress, also known as “The Little Nothing”-dress, was heralded for its uncluttered look for those who were wealthy enough to demonstrate that they did not have to put in too much effort: “who hate to seem as though they’ve tried too hard”.
In 1961, the conspicuously blasé look flowed from the youth culture of the streets to the silver screen, with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the elegant black Givenchy dress and to Jackie Kennedy as she moved with her husband into the White House.
The vertical flow was seen in how these celebrities popularized the pared-down look, but they were diffusing a horizontal flow that originated with the young and the restless. The suggestion is that various flows coexist and even feed off each other, which already in 1961 indicates the complexity of fashioning identity.
The example also indicates a development where the wealthy are not automatically the trendsetters, and that high status is often displayed discretely as a form of inconspicuous ostentation. The shift dress, then, communicated the horizontal flow of youth culture while also displaying a vertical flow, because the high-end designer dress was still a luxury item that only the elite had access to.
Before the upward fashion flow was associated with subcultures, it was linked to the styles that were soaked up from the lower classes. Referring to the 1960s, George Field (1970) argued that “white collar” imitated “blue collar” lifestyle and clothing preferences, with examples such as camping, pickup trucks, and bowling. In fashion, he discussed the “upward flow” of denim jeans.
From a background as work wear, its rise to fashion icon took off in the 1950s, when jeans became a symbol of resistance to conformity worn by young dissidents personified by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955; directed by Nicholas Ray; Warner Bros). As jeans flowed upward in the 1950s, they revealed their accommodating potential appealing to the young trendsetters as well as a wide range of social groups, including hippies and bikers and, later, heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and grunge.
Since the 1970s, jeans have transcended gender, age, social status, and cultural boundaries, becoming part of a global fashion uniform. With the introduction of designer jeans in the 1970s and the first denim haute couture gown by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel AW 2006 collection, denim can be seen to represent a more general leveling of the fashion hierarchy where distinction within this limited example appears through subtler means such as adjustments in wash, cut, brand, and assemblage of the jeans rather than radically different styles introduced seasonally.
The ambivalence of fashioning identity exemplified with the Kennedy inauguration has only increased with the democratization of style brought on by mass-fashion and digital media. The 1990s saw the rise of fast fashion characterized by more rapid and cheaper production than ready-to-wear.
By outsourcing the production to low-cost areas such as the Far East, mass-fashion retail chains have been able to produce fashion inspired by both runway fashion and street-style at a pace and a price point that have altered the conditions for the fashion cycle toward a greater degree of leveling between high and mass fashion.
A cycle has traditionally begun with a new season and lasted until the next season so the process could start over. With fast fashion and digital media, this cadence has become more of a continuous influx when companies such as H&M and Zara can go from idea to store shelf in under two weeks and offer thousands of new products a year.
The biannual fashion cycle still provides the industry and media with a certain rhythm and sense of anticipation most markedly with fashion weeks, but the consumers are not necessarily stepping to the beat. To accommodate this, the fashion brands have added mid-season lines to their assortment, pushing the fashion industry at all levels toward what Anna Wintour, editor-inchief of American Vogue, has termed “a seasonless cycle” (Thomas 2007: 316).
If not exactly dismantling the fashion cycle, the development has posed a challenge to the traditional fashion hierarchy of price, accessibility, and quality. An example of this radical shift in the culture of fashion is the luxury fast fashion of high-low capsule collections set off by H&M with Karl Lagerfeld in 2004, followed by, among others, Stella McCartney, Viktor & Rolf, Comme des Garçons, Lanvin, and Maison Margiela. Rather than losing its novelty value, these collaborations have only increased in popularity in their more than a decade of existence.
The “Balmain x H&M” in 2015 created intense interest in many of the selected cities where the collection was released. Customers slept outside the stores for days in order to get their hands on the coveted items, demonstrating new systems of anticipation beyond the traditional luxury system.
Many of the styles were bought for the explicit purpose of resale, some of them selling for three times the original price on eBay the same day they were sold in stores. This demonstrates the complication of the fashion hierarchy and direction of fashion flows when a high street version of luxury approaches the price of a “real” Balmain. In a qualitative study of how H&M uses co-branding as a strategy, Anne Peirson-Smith (2014: 58) argues that the cohabitation of high and low brands, as seen in these capsule collections, are intended to “establish brand visibility and credibility amongst aspirational consumers.”
Crossovers are not just seen between luxury and mass fashion but also between brands such as Liberty of London x Acne Studios (2014), between creative fields such as artist Damien Hirst for Levi’s (2008), filmmaker David Lynch for footwear designer Christian Louboutin (2007), and celebrity collaborations such as Kate Moss for Topshop (since 2007).
And not all brand partnerships are one-offs, some being ongoing, such as Yohji Yamamoto’s line Y-3 for Adidas. A related development in designer collaborations is the high-high projects between luxury brands or designers. An example is Karl Lagerfeld x Louis Vuitton (2014) that was part of the limited edition series of accessories that celebrated the iconic LV-monogram in honor of the house’s 160th anniversary.
Though this is not the first time Louis Vuitton has invited other designers to reinterpret their monogram, the example is still interesting in relation to how this type of collaboration seems to challenge the argument that high-low collaborations are a success because they attract new consumer segments to both brands (Fury 2014).
Because both Louis Vuitton and Karl Lagerfeld as creative director of Chanel represent luxury fashion, they therefore have similar target groups. However, the collaboration still communicates a positive message of mutual creative honoring which reflects the positive outcome of the high-low capsule collections.
The projected leveling of the fashion hierarchy and the reduction of time lag between inception and demise have created conditions for a scattered flow in the adoption process that moves in several directions at once.
This tendency has been enhanced by the general democratic development in which anyone can potentially be a designer, fashion editor, and style icon (Thomas 2007; Agins 1999; Lipovetsky 1994). The effects of this have been understood as an acceleration of fashion (Loschek 2009), stylistic pluralism (Laver 2012), and creative democracy (Polhemus 1994).
Fashioning identity requires ambivalence management within shifting social, aesthetic, and symbolic regulations. While it still holds true more than a century later that “change itself does not change” (Simmel 1957: 545), the fashion flows have become more complex.
The more difficult conditions for distinction have promoted unscrupulous visual hijacking and mannered protests in fashion for the sole purpose of scrambling the signals of social belonging. Obscuring the sartorial symbols enhances the element of resistance in fashion, stimulating the dynamic where some are early to accept novelties in fashion while others need a longer gestation period.
Fashioning identity is personal, intimately linked as it is to our bodies, social bonds, and cultural ties. We tell stories with the way we choose to look, mixing fact and fiction for the desired social effect. Fashion narratives are key vehicles in transmitting these shifting messages of identity.
Engaging in identity politics through fashion has become more democratized across gender, class status, ethnic, and age gaps, bound closer through digital media and fast fashion. If we consider fashion to be a powerful potion, the concentration is individually chosen depending on life situation and personal preference. Fashioning identity, regardless of the degree of engagement, operates with a symbolic content that is the same regardless of the concentration. This is linked to the social standards of looking the part in contemporary fashion that allow for schizophrenic shifts between fashionable personas—punks one day, ballerina the next—without it being either more or less than playful self-curation.