Cars and Clothing:

Understanding Fashion Trends

WILLIAM H. REYNOLDS

Keeping attuned to fash-ion trends is crucial to thesuccess of companies inmany industries. This articleexplains that fashion trendscan be detected fairly easilyif the marketer is aware ofcertain factors which helpto determine whether a par-ticular innovation will go onto become an acceptedfashion. According to theauthor, fashion trends maybe of two types which fa-cil iate the prediction ofpeaks in fashion popularityand the point in time whenthe trend is likely to die out.

Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32 (July,1968), pp. 44-49.

MANY manufacturers of consumer goods must contend with theproblem of fashion in their planning of new products. A

fashion cycle is not quite the same thing as a product life cycle.For instance, it appears that color television in a few years willsupplant present black-and-white sets. This will occur, however,not because of a change in taste or fashion, but because of funda-mental technological progress leading to an improved product atnot too great a difference in price. Fashion, though, is a differentmatter. Words like "fickle" and "whimsical" are used in discus-sing it. A little common sense is in order.

The Detection of Fashion TrendsContrary to what one might think, it is extraordinarily easy to

detect fashion trends. For instance, in recent years it has beenobvious to everyone—even to junior high school girls no more than13 years old—that skirts were becoming shorter. Detecting theexistence of this trend required no more than an intuitive plottingof points on a line. Only a few points were necessary to plot aline showing the direction of the fashion trend.

Sometimes, of course, difficulties can be encountered in plottingfashion trend lines. What kinds of measures, for instance, shouldbe used in sketching the trend toward the increasing use of popand op (and psychedelic) art in advertising? One answer wouldbe to count inches of print advertising using these visual devices.How many ads in the current issue of a popular magazine showthe influence of pop art? How many in the previous issue?

One reason why this works is that fashion is necessarily public.A secret fashion is a contradiction in terms. A designer hopingto start a new fashion may, of course, try to keep his designsunder cover until they are launched. This is a risky practice,however, since a new fashion usually requires some kind of con-certed effort from a number of designers. The midiskirt—whichreaches midway between the knee and ankle—will not catch onuntil several firms have taken up the idea. Finns in fashion in-dustries thus (a) try to find out what their competitors are doingand (b) sometimes deliberately "leak" information on their ownplans in the hope that competitors will follow them. It is a rarefashion which is a surprise to the people in a certain field.

Another reason why counting works—and why designers do nothave to worry too much about missing a particular bandwagon—is that fashions tend to persist much longer than most people

44

Cars and Clothing: Understanding Fashion Trends 45

think. Pontoon styling—which is a term used todesignate a car with a flat rear deck, a flat fronthood, and a midships passenger compartment—dom-inated automobile design from 1949 to about 1965.The shift dress has been around for a decade. (Weare not speaking here of fads, which are distin-guished from fashion changes in that they are short-lived, bizarre, and often restricted to a coterie.)

A fashion trend can often be detected by judg-ment alone. Any aware person looking at ads inthe middle sixties would have noted that pop. op.camp, and psychedelic art were increasingly influ-ential in advertising.

The phrase "aware person" in the previous para-graph should be emphasized. Management-typepeople are often very insensitive to their culturalenvironment. Managers and executives tend tospend their evenings going through their brief-cases instead of exposing themselves to current "hap-penings." Even if his firm produces a product in-fluenced by fashion, the businessman is often thelast to know that fashion is changing. The suc-cessful executive simply does not have time to at-tend art shows, read non-professional books, leafidly through teen-age magazines, or keep up withmovie news. A designer, for instance, might havenoted that Richard Burton wore a neck chain atthe Venice Film Festival in 1966 and that male popsingers were wearing beads and neck chains stillearlier. These are the obscure items in the newsthat the businessman is likely to miss. The currenttrend to neck chains for men would have been appar-ent to an aware designer two years ago.

The designer interested in launching a new fash-ion trend obviously cannot point at evidence of thiskind. The stylist who first put flns on the Cadillachad veiy little assurance that the style would bewidely accepted. He could have suggested that thepublic might be becoming fin-conscious because ofthe influence of aircraft design, since there werea great many more airplanes at the time than beforeWorld War II. In starting a trend, however, count-ing is rarely productive, and other kinds of evidencemust be used in guessing whether or not a newstlye is going to become a fashion. (Some rules ofthumb useful in this guessing operation are re-viewed later in this article.)

Horizontal and Vertical Trends

Fashion trends may be of two kinds which arecalled here horizontal and vertical. A horizontaltrend would be exemplified by a fashion adopted pro-gressively by more and more people, but which doesnot change a great deal in the process. Turtlenecksweaters might be an example. They have becomeincreasingly common, but still look about the sameas they did 50 years ago.

Purely vertical fashion trends are rare, but would

be exemplified by a fashion which does not spreadthrough the general population and remains re-stricted to a "coterie," but which changes progres-sively in a specifiable direction before it is super-seded. Full plate armor, for instance, became in-creasingly more decorated, more convoluted, and lessfunctional throughout the sixteenth century. At thesame time, fewer and fewer people were wearing fullplate armor.

Most fashion trends exhibit both horizontal andvertical movement. Fins in automobile design arean illustration. They first appeared on the Cadillacin the late forties and then spread (horizontally)to other cars. Concurrently, fins became larger andmore conspicuous, and were thus consequently also avertical trend.'

Mini-skirts are another instance. They becameshorter as they became more popular.

It is useful for the marketer to know that mostfashion trends show both horizontal and verticalmovement. There are two reasons. One is thatit makes trends easier to detect; movement in twodirections is more likely to be noted than movementin only one. Second, the fact that fashion trendsmove both horizontally and vertically makes it easierto predict peaks and the point in time when thetrend is likely to die out.

Fashion and taste interact- One obtains distinc-tion by expressing advanced taste within a fashionand not by espousing a completely different fashion.(This is the reason why fashions are usually verti-cal as well as horizontal.) If Baroque music is popu-lar, for instance, one can demonstrate superiortaste by liking only certain examples of this kindof music—only "the very best Baroque," but not byopen admiration of Wagner.

When a fashion in musical taste has reached apoint at which only one composer's compositions areacceptable, it is very probable that a change in the

1 William H. Reynolds, "The Wide C-Post and theFashion Process," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 29(January, 1965), pp. 49-54.

2 Edward Sapir, "Fashion." in The Encyclopedia ofSocial Sciences, Vol. 6 (New York: The MaeMillanCompany, 1960), pp. 139-144.

• ABOUT THE AUTHOR. William H.Reynolds is Professor of Marketing andCoordinator of the Marketing Area inthe College of Business Adnninistrationof the University of Illinois at ChicagoCircle. His Ph.D. is from the Universityof Chicago. He is the author of manyarticles and coauthor [with James H.Myers) of CONSUMER BEHAVIORAND MARKETING MANAGEMENT.This article on fashion trends will appearin different form in a forthcoming book PRODUCT ANDMARKETS to be published by Appleton-Century-Crofts.

46 Journal of Marketing, July, 1968

fashion is imminent. Dwight E. Robinson-* (withothers, including H. H. Hansen**) has insisted thatall fashions come to an end in this kind of "excess"or "extremes." The Gothic arch was carried as faras the technology of the time permitted and wasthen superseded. The Renaissance lace ruff reachedan impossible apogee in Elizabethan times and wasthen abandoned.

Another reason why fashion trends are verticalas well as horizontal and go through a series ofdirectional changes before being superseded, maylie in Herbert Simon's model of the search processas an element in the rationality of the "satisficingman"5 His argument is that it is really impossiblefor people to optimize, if only because time is infi-nite and the alternatives that might be consideredin a particular situation are not. Instead, a man ora firm confronted with a problem will choose themost satisfactory of the several alternative solu-tions that come to mind. If none is satisfactory,the man or the firm will "search" for newalternatives.

It is suggested here that Simon's satisficing modelapplies to the designer—the man who "invents"fashion—as much as to firm or to the consumer.

Confronted with fins as a fashion in automobiledesign, the satisficing stylist will first consider en-larging them, then canting them and decoratingthem with chrome; he will consider totally newelements of design only if all of these immediatepossibilities prove unsatisfactory. If he comes tothe conclusion that everything that can be done withfins has already been done and that further exploita-tion of them is impossible, he might well seek atthat point some new fashion to take their place.

Defining ExcessObserving the direction in which a fashion is

moving (and its speed), one can sometimes guessthe moment when the fashion will have reached thepoint of no return. The problem lies in trying topredict how exti'eme a fashion must become beforeit is abandoned.

Mini-skirts again furnish an excellent instance.One would have thought—considering social moresand the history of short skirts—that mid-thighwould be the point at which the trend to shorterskirts would have to stop. In fact, the concomitantfashions of leotards and tights made skirts muchshorter than this to satisfy the requirements ofmodesty.

On the other hand, some fashions are clearly self-

TABLE 1. OVER-ALL LENGTH AND HEIGHT (IN INCHES)OF FORD AND CHEVROLET CARS*

Year

1963196119591957195519531951

FordLength

209.9209.9208.0207.7198.5197.8197.3

Height55.554.856.057.161.062.363.2

ChevroletLength210.4209.3210.9200.0196.1195.7197.4

Height55.855.556.259.960.363.268.3

Dwight E. Robinson, "Fashion Theory and ProductDesign," Harvard Business Review, Vol. 36 (Novem-ber-December, 1958), pp. 126-138.H. H. Hansen, Costumes and Styles (New York:E. P. Dutton, 1956).James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations(New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.), pp. 140-141.

* Even numbered years are skipped. Based on un-published analysis made in 1963 by the author.

limiting, if only for technological reasons. Turningto the automobiles again, two of three long-termtrends which have governed automobile styling sinceat least the middle twenties came to an end in theearly sixties. The third would have been expectedby an astute observer to have ended at the sametime, but did not. These three trends were toward;

*length and lowness*increased use of glass*integrated design.

The first two trends ended; the third did not (forreasons which will be explained).

Length and Lowness

Cars for many years were longer and lower ineach successive model year. Length and lovimess, ineffect, were styling ideals. Until very recently, along low car, other things being equal, was likely tobe a better car. A low car has a lower center ofgravity, is more stable, holds the road better, and isless likely to turn over. Until V-8's supplanted thebig-in-line engines of the past, a long hood wasnecessary to accommodate a powerful engine. Forthis reason—and because roominess is refiected inincreased length—big, powerful, expensive carstended to be long.

Once established, the trend became self-perpetu-ating. Models introduced in 1930 were longer andlower than those introduced in 1925; 1935 modelswere still longer and lower. Progress in automobilestyling meant that each succeeding new modelshould be longer and lower than the preceding model.

By 1960, ordinary passenger cars had becomeabout as long and as low as they could get. Longercars simply would not fit into garages, and lowercars involved impossible headroom conditions. Thetrend stopped. Table 1 shows the overall length andheight of Ford and Chevrolet cars from 1951 to 1963.

Glass Area in Cars

Second, there was a long term trend toward in-creased use of glass, which also came to an end about1960. In part, this trend was a response to im-proved glass technology and roof support engineer-ing. Better visibility was another factor. There may

Cars and Clothing: Understanding Fashion Trends 47

TABLE 2. INCHES OF GLASS AREA, FORD AND CHEVROLET

FOUR-DOOR SEDANS*

Inches of Glass AreaYear Ford Chevrolet

1963196219611960195919581957

3723374537924773365532603260

4170419642574687468734983916

* Based on an unpublished analysis made in 1963 bythe author. Exact figures later than 1963 are not easilyavailable, but industry sources say there has been littlechange in recent years.

also have been interaction with the general draft ofdesign in other areas. Glass has been used more inconstruction, for instance.

The trend to increased use of glass, too, wasself-perpetuating. Once it had been establishedthat more glass meant a newer car, designers wereforced to try to find ways to use more glass in eachmodel. The two-door and four-door hardtops, withno center roof support, became enormously popularin the 1950s. Connpound windshields, which curvedinto the roof as well as from side to side, appearedon 1960 models.

Meanwhile, this increased use of glass began topose difficult heating and cooling problems. Heavytinting became necessary. The use of glass even-tually peaked out. Table 2 shows the glass area inFord and Chevrolet four-door sedans from 1957 to1963.

The termination of these two trends, length andlowness and increased use of glass, was predictedwith remarkable accuracy as to date by people in theindustry. Technology imposed limits.

The third trend, integrated design, was also con-fidently expected to terminate in the early sixties,but, as mentioned, failed to do so. In this case, how-ever, the limits imposed were not technological.Instead, the prediction was based on a judgment asto how far the imagination of designers could carrya particular fashion. The designers proved able tocarry it further than expected.

"Filling the Cube"The trend in question was the steady movement

since the 1920s toward integrated design and whathas been called "filling the cube." Looking at carsover the past four or five decades, one can see thatrunning boards have disappeared, headlights havebeen faired into fenders, and fenders have beenfaired into the basic shape of the car. Bumpershave become integral. License plates have beenrecessed. By 1960, it appeared that this trend hadbeen carried about as far as it could go.

Recent automobiles suggest that the trend tointegrated design is still in full swing. Designers

seem simply to have shifted their attention from theelimination of excrescences to the elimination ofextraneous design features on the surface of the car.

For example, the grille replaced the free-standingradiator many years ago, an instance of the long-term trend to integrated design. The grille itself,however, has been eliminated as a design featureon many current cars: The Corvair, the Corvette,the Avanti, the XKE Jaguar, and many Europeancars. The new plastic integrated grille and bumperpainted to resemble ordinary sheet metal is a stepin the same direction. Similarly, headlight and taillight pods disappeared long ago, but even after theyhad been faired into the body of the car, continuedto exist as extraneous surface design elements. Itis, consequently, another instance of the long-termtrend toward integrated design that headlights areconcealed on many current cars and that tail lightsare camouflaged. Windshield wipers also are nowconcealed.

Finally, designers are moving away from thedeeply gouged sculpturing which characterized carsin the early sixties according to D. R. HoUs in theMarch 26, 1962 Automotive News. The trend tointegrated design is still in progress.

The theory that a fashion ends in excess is thusvaluable, as stated, but also dangerous. If the"excess" is technological or functional, some re-liance can be placed upon the theory as a predictorof fashion change. One should be extremely careful,however, in placing confidence in any "excess" whichis visual and aesthetic. Who would have thoughtthat men's shoes in medieval France would have be-come so long that it would be necessary for men totie the toes of their shoes to their knees or shins?

Factors to ConsiderThe real money in trend reading lies in early de-

tection. The firm which sets a fashion or is earlyto exploit it can follow a skimming price policy withcorrespondingly high profits. At the same time, thefirm which catches on to a new fashion in its earlystages while its growth is accelerating (either hori-zontally or vertically) can often carve out a niche inthe market which is more or less impregnable bythe time competitors arrive on the scene. Thesecompetitors may force the early firm to lower itsprices, but the early firm might well be able to main-tain its share of the market untouched.

Nevertheless, deciding on the basis of only twoor three points on a time series chart that a trendis present can be extremely risky. Granny dressesare an instance. When first introduced, they seemedto spread like wildfire, especially in Southern Cali-fornia which is often alleged to be a trend-settingarea. A manufacturer who leaped into productionof g'rannj' dresses, however, would have been gravelydisappointed. First, other areas of the country didnot show the same enthusiasm as Southern Cali-

48 Journal of Marketing, July, 1968

fornia, and the spread of the fashion was limitedgeographically. Second, the fashion did not spreadbeyond girls of junior high school age. Their oldersisters and their mothers did not stai't wearinggranny dresses. The spread of the fashion was thuslimited to a single age group. Even the young girlswho wore grannies often made them themselves. Thefad collapsed quickly and never amounted to verymuch.

To jump on a bandwagon too early—before oneknows where it is going—can lead to disastrousloss. If one waits too long, one can miss the band-wagon altogether. A firm must try to detect trendsearly and at the same time try to minimize risk byguessing at the shape of the curve a particular trendis likely to follow. There are a few rules of thumbthat might be helpful in deciding whether a fashioninnovation is likely to be a growing trend. All ofthe rules of thumb listed below are qualitative andheuristic rather than analytical and quantitative,and are less "rules" than factors that people infashion industries should take into account in theirdecision making.

First, does the innovation meet soine genuine needor does it have some genuine functional reason forbeing? If so, it has a greater chance of successthan simple gimmickry. For instance, the push-button transmission introduced on Chrysler productsin the fifties ofi ered no advantage whatsoever overthe lever on the steering column and actually hadsome disadvantages. The driver had to remove hishand from the wheel to operate the buttons andsometimes confused the button with his heater con-trols. The buttons aroused some early interest,but never really became important.

Contrariwise, the shift dress seemed to fail in thelate fifties, mainly because it was too radical a de-parture from earlier fashions. Nevertheless, itoffered real benefits. It was easy to put on and takeoff, concealed bad figures and accentuated good ones,made confining girdles less necessary and was con-sequently more comfortable, was relatively inexpen-sive to produce and easy to run up on a home sewingmachine, and was equally suitable as a house dressor for shopping. While it failed to catch on im-mediately, now, ten years later, it is still a dominantunderlying theme in women's fashion.

Second, what is the nature of the long term trendswithin v)hich the particular fashion under consider-ation happens to exist? It has already been men-tioned that automobile styling for many years wasdominated by powerful trends that no manufacturercould really hope to buck successfully. Chrysler inthe early fifties recognized that a short, high caroffered many practical advantages and tried to fightthe trend toward long, low cars. It failed, and it isthat failure that marked the date of the beginningof Chrysler's subsequent long" decline.

Third, look at past fashion cycles. Is the trend

to close-fitting slacks for men approaching the limit?A glance back at the skintight doeskin breeches ofRegency England will assure one that the currenttrend may have a long way to go.

Fourth, are there concurrent trends in other in-dustries? One has been mentioned—glass in carsand glass in architecture. At the present time,psychedelic art is important in painting, music,lighting, fabric patterns, home furnishings, refrig-erator design, and many other areas. The manu-facturer who utilizes this trend is joining a wide-scale movement with many mutually reinforcingelements.

Fifth, are there self-limiting factors? These havealready been discussed with emphasis on technologi-cal limits, but others should be considered. Is thefashion likely to be limited geographically? To asingle age group? (Example: granny dresses.) Toavant garde people only? (Example: John Cagecompositions.)

Sixth, inspect the curve. How many points on thetrend line can be plotted? A trend line with manypoints charted obviously warrants more confidencethan one with only two or three. Do the pointswhich can be plotted approximate a clearly definedline? A nice solid trend line looks better than onewith jiggles in it. Is the curve accelerating orotherwise changing?

Seventh, consider the dicta of sociologists andanthropologists on the factors influencing the adop-tion of a new product or practice. Is the fashioncompatible with the norms, values, and techniquesof the society (or at least lacking in obvious incom-patibility) ? How prestigious is the originator?How complex is the fashion? (That is, can one adoptit easily, or is some difficult learning process re-quired?) Is the fashion communicable? (Willpeople became aware of it?) Is it divisible? (A"divisible" new fashion product or fashion is onethat can be tried piecemeal. Farmers will accept anew way of farming much more readily if they cantry it out first on a single small piece of groundthan if they have to replant an entire farm. Sim-ilarly, some fashions require that a wardrobe becompletely replaced, while others are divisible andcan be adopted by women in the normal process ofbuying one new garment after another.) 6

Eighth, and perhaps most important, is any insideinformation available? One person or firm rarelymakes a fashion by itself. The firm in a fashionindustry must be aware of the institutional processesthrough which fashions are created. More simply,it must know what its competitors are planning.

A corollary of this eighth rule is that the natureof the fashion process probably varies in detail fromindustry to industry. A person able to predict

• Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (NewYork: The Free Press, 1962), p. 124.

Cars and Clothing: Understanding Fashion Trends 49

fashion in cars, for instance, might flnd predictingfashion in jewelry or package design impossible.

ConclusionTo conclude on the same optimistic note with

which this account began, it is not too hard to keepin touch with fashion trends. They are usuallynakedly apparent, and ways more or less reliableexist to confirm those which are less apparent. Thebest of these is counting instances of a fashionthrough time.

One important point is that both the designer andthe businessman have a contribution to make in thedetection of fashion trends. The designer maysuffer from "cultural hyperaesthesia" and see trendswhere none exist. The businessman is rarely amember of the avant grade and may be inclined todrag his feet. Both are needed. The Mustang, forexample, is a highly successful compromise betweenthe advanced European designs proposed by thestylists working on the car, and the more conven-tional American designs preferred by management.

That a Fashion moves both horizontally and ver-tically makes it easier to decide whether or not atrend is in the making. Two questions to be asked are:Is the incidence of the fashion in the population on

the upswing? Is the fashion itself changing in somespecifiable direction?

There are other factors to consider in evaluatingwhether a new fashion is likely to become popular.Is it functional? What long-term trends are op-erating? What is the character of past fashioncycles? Are there concurrent trends in other in-dustries? Are there self-limiting factors? Can thefashion be adopted easily? What inside informa-tion is available?

Finally, the firm in a fashion industry has severalbuilt-in protections. One is that lead-times formany products are long enough that a firm is likelyto hear about pending fashions even if it is not ac-tually trying to do so. (And it usually is.) Arelated point is that fashions tend to persist longerthan most people think. People keep refrigeratorsand washing machines for ten or more years, andthis population of past products can inhibit rapidfashion change. This is true also of furniture andcars, and even, though to a much lesser extent, ofwomen's clothes.

There is money to be made in understandingfashion, and money can be lost in misunderstandingit. Most of the time, however, fashion helps ratherthan hurts marketers.

MARKETING MEMO-

Innovations by Ind'ty'tduals . . .

"Some people are apparently afraid to use new ideas, and I don't think it's justbecause they are new. It seems to me they feel there is a possibility they may runout of ideas if they keep cranking them out and putting them to work. Balderdash.Ideas aren't non-renewable natural resources like coal or copper. Each man has amagical ability to create ideas simply by willing to do so. And, the more ideas hecreates, the more he will continue to create.

"We should be grateful for the challenges we face, for without challenge man doesnot grow. If you are never threatened you'll never discover the limit of your courage.If you're never puzzled you'll never determine the extent of your intelligence."

—Remarks by Steve Allen, Ideafile, Vol.IV (January, 1968), p. 12.

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