Cars and Clothing:
Understanding Fashion Trends
WILLIAM H. REYNOLDS
manufacturers of consumer goods must contend with the
MANY
problem 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 will
supplant present black-and-white sets. This will occur, however,
not because of a change in taste or fashion, but because of fundamental technological progress leading to an improved product at
not too great a difference in price. Fashion, though, is a different
matter. Words like "fickle" and "whimsical" are used in discussing it. A little common sense is in order.
Keeping attuned to fashion trends is crucial to the
success of companies in
many industries. This article
explains that fashion trends
can be detected fairly easily
if the marketer is aware of
certain factors which help
to determine whether a particular innovation will go on
to become an accepted
fashion. According to the
author, fashion trends may
be of two types which faciliate the prediction of
peaks in fashion popularity
and the point in time when
the trend is likely to die out.
Journal of Marketing,
1968), pp. 44-49.
Vol. 32
(July,
The Detection of Fashion Trends
Contrary to what one might think, it is extraordinarily easy to
detect fashion trends. For instance, in recent years it has been
obvious to everyone—even to junior high school girls no more than
13 years old—that skirts were becoming shorter. Detecting the
existence of this trend required no more than an intuitive plotting
of points on a line. Only a few points were necessary to plot a
line showing the direction of the fashion trend.
Sometimes, of course, difficulties can be encountered in plotting
fashion trend lines. What kinds of measures, for instance, should
be used in sketching the trend toward the increasing use of pop
and op (and psychedelic) art in advertising? One answer would
be to count inches of print advertising using these visual devices.
How many ads in the current issue of a popular magazine show
the 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 hoping
to start a new fashion may, of course, try to keep his designs
under cover until they are launched. This is a risky practice,
however, since a new fashion usually requires some kind of concerted effort from a number of designers. The midiskirt—which
reaches midway between the knee and ankle—will not catch on
until several firms have taken up the idea. Finns in fashion industries thus (a) try to find out what their competitors are doing
and (b) sometimes deliberately "leak" information on their own
plans in the hope that competitors will follow them. It is a rare
fashion which is a surprise to the people in a certain field.
Another reason why counting works—and why designers do not
have 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
think. Pontoon styling—which is a term used to
designate a car with a flat rear deck, a flat front
hood, and a midships passenger compartment—dominated automobile design from 1949 to about 1965.
The shift dress has been around for a decade. (We
are not speaking here of fads, which are distinguished from fashion changes in that they are shortlived, bizarre, and often restricted to a coterie.)
A fashion trend can often be detected by judgment alone. Any aware person looking at ads in
the middle sixties would have noted that pop. op.
camp, and psychedelic art were increasingly influential in advertising.
The phrase "aware person" in the previous paragraph should be emphasized. Management-type
people are often very insensitive to their cultural
environment. Managers and executives tend to
spend their evenings going through their briefcases instead of exposing themselves to current "happenings." Even if his firm produces a product influenced by fashion, the businessman is often the
last to know that fashion is changing. The successful executive simply does not have time to attend art shows, read non-professional books, leaf
idly through teen-age magazines, or keep up with
movie news. A designer, for instance, might have
noted that Richard Burton wore a neck chain at
the Venice Film Festival in 1966 and that male pop
singers were wearing beads and neck chains still
earlier. These are the obscure items in the news
that the businessman is likely to miss. The current
trend to neck chains for men would have been apparent to an aware designer two years ago.
The designer interested in launching a new fashion trend obviously cannot point at evidence of this
kind. The stylist who first put flns on the Cadillac
had veiy little assurance that the style would be
widely accepted. He could have suggested that the
public might be becoming fin-conscious because of
the influence of aircraft design, since there were
a great many more airplanes at the time than before
World War II. In starting a trend, however, counting is rarely productive, and other kinds of evidence
must be used in guessing whether or not a new
stlye is going to become a fashion. (Some rules of
thumb useful in this guessing operation are reviewed later in this article.)
Horizontal and Vertical Trends
Fashion trends may be of two kinds which are
called here horizontal and vertical. A horizontal
trend would be exemplified by a fashion adopted progressively by more and more people, but which does
not change a great deal in the process. Turtleneck
sweaters might be an example. They have become
increasingly common, but still look about the same
as they did 50 years ago.
Purely vertical fashion trends are rare, but would
45
be exemplified by a fashion which does not spread
through the general population and remains restricted to a "coterie," but which changes progressively in a specifiable direction before it is superseded. Full plate armor, for instance, became increasingly more decorated, more convoluted, and less
functional throughout the sixteenth century. At the
same time, fewer and fewer people were wearing full
plate armor.
Most fashion trends exhibit both horizontal and
vertical movement. Fins in automobile design are
an illustration. They first appeared on the Cadillac
in the late forties and then spread (horizontally)
to other cars. Concurrently, fins became larger and
more conspicuous, and were thus consequently also a
vertical trend.'
Mini-skirts are another instance. They became
shorter as they became more popular.
It is useful for the marketer to know that most
fashion trends show both horizontal and vertical
movement. There are two reasons. One is that
it makes trends easier to detect; movement in two
directions is more likely to be noted than movement
in only one. Second, the fact that fashion trends
move both horizontally and vertically makes it easier
to predict peaks and the point in time when the
trend is likely to die out.
Fashion and taste interact- One obtains distinction by expressing advanced taste within a fashion
and not by espousing a completely different fashion.
(This is the reason why fashions are usually vertical as well as horizontal.) If Baroque music is popular, for instance, one can demonstrate superior
taste by liking only certain examples of this kind
of music—only "the very best Baroque," but not by
open admiration of Wagner.
When a fashion in musical taste has reached a
point at which only one composer's compositions are
acceptable, it is very probable that a change in the
1 William H. Reynolds, "The Wide C-Post and the
Fashion Process," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 29
(January, 1965), pp. 49-54.
2 Edward Sapir, "Fashion." in The Encyclopedia of
Social Sciences, Vol. 6 (New York: The MaeMillan
Company, 1960), pp. 139-144.
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR. William H.
Reynolds is Professor of Marketing and
Coordinator of the Marketing Area in
the College of Business Adnninistration
of the University of Illinois at Chicago
Circle. His Ph.D. is from the University
of Chicago. He is the author of many
articles and coauthor [with James H.
Myers) of CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
AND MARKETING MANAGEMENT.
This article on fashion trends will appear
in different form in a forthcoming book PRODUCT AND
MARKETS to be published by Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Journal of Marketing, July, 1968
46
fashion is imminent. Dwight E. Robinson-* (with
others, including H. H. Hansen**) has insisted that
all fashions come to an end in this kind of "excess"
or "extremes." The Gothic arch was carried as far
as the technology of the time permitted and was
then superseded. The Renaissance lace ruff reached
an impossible apogee in Elizabethan times and was
then abandoned.
Another reason why fashion trends are vertical
as well as horizontal and go through a series of
directional changes before being superseded, may
lie in Herbert Simon's model of the search process
as an element in the rationality of the "satisficing
man"5 His argument is that it is really impossible
for people to optimize, if only because time is infinite and the alternatives that might be considered
in a particular situation are not. Instead, a man or
a firm confronted with a problem will choose the
most satisfactory of the several alternative solutions that come to mind. If none is satisfactory,
the man or the firm will "search" for new
alternatives.
It is suggested here that Simon's satisficing model
applies to the designer—the man who "invents"
fashion—as much as to firm or to the consumer.
Confronted with fins as a fashion in automobile
design, the satisficing stylist will first consider enlarging them, then canting them and decorating
them with chrome; he will consider totally new
elements of design only if all of these immediate
possibilities prove unsatisfactory. If he comes to
the conclusion that everything that can be done with
fins has already been done and that further exploitation of them is impossible, he might well seek at
that point some new fashion to take their place.
Defining Excess
Observing the direction in which a fashion is
moving (and its speed), one can sometimes guess
the moment when the fashion will have reached the
point of no return. The problem lies in trying to
predict how exti'eme a fashion must become before
it is abandoned.
Mini-skirts again furnish an excellent instance.
One would have thought—considering social mores
and the history of short skirts—that mid-thigh
would be the point at which the trend to shorter
skirts would have to stop. In fact, the concomitant
fashions of leotards and tights made skirts much
shorter than this to satisfy the requirements of
modesty.
On the other hand, some fashions are clearly selfDwight E. Robinson, "Fashion Theory and Product
Design," Harvard Business Review, Vol. 36 (November-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.
TABLE 1. OVER-ALL LENGTH AND HEIGHT ( I N I N C H E S )
OF FORD AND CHEVROLET CARS*
Ford
Length
Height
Chevrolet
Length
Height
210.4
55.8
55.5
209.9
1963
209.3
54.8
209.9
55.5
1961
210.9
56.0
208.0
56.2
1959
200.0
57.1
59.9
207.7
1957
196.1
61.0
60.3
198.5
1955
195.7
197.8
62.3
63.2
1953
63.2
197.4
68.3
197.3
1951
* Even numbered years are skipped. Based on unpublished analysis made in 1963 by the author.
Year
limiting, if only for technological reasons. Turning
to the automobiles again, two of three long-term
trends which have governed automobile styling since
at least the middle twenties came to an end in the
early sixties. The third would have been expected
by an astute observer to have ended at the same
time, 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 (for
reasons which will be explained).
Length and Lowness
Cars for many years were longer and lower in
each successive model year. Length and lovimess, in
effect, were styling ideals. Until very recently, a
long low car, other things being equal, was likely to
be a better car. A low car has a lower center of
gravity, is more stable, holds the road better, and is
less likely to turn over. Until V-8's supplanted the
big-in-line engines of the past, a long hood was
necessary to accommodate a powerful engine. For
this reason—and because roominess is refiected in
increased length—big, powerful, expensive cars
tended to be long.
Once established, the trend became self-perpetuating. Models introduced in 1930 were longer and
lower than those introduced in 1925; 1935 models
were still longer and lower. Progress in automobile
styling meant that each succeeding new model
should be longer and lower than the preceding model.
By 1960, ordinary passenger cars had become
about as long and as low as they could get. Longer
cars simply would not fit into garages, and lower
cars involved impossible headroom conditions. The
trend stopped. Table 1 shows the overall length and
height of Ford and Chevrolet cars from 1951 to 1963.
Glass Area in Cars
Second, there was a long term trend toward increased use of glass, which also came to an end about
1960. In part, this trend was a response to improved glass technology and roof support engineering. Better visibility was another factor. There may
Cars and Clothing: Understanding Fashion Trends
TABLE 2. INCHES OF GLASS AREA, FORD AND CHEVROLET
FOUR-DOOR SEDANS*
Year
Ford
1963
1962
1961
1960
1959
1958
1957
3723
3745
3792
4773
3655
3260
3260
Inches of Glass Area
Chevrolet
4170
4196
4257
4687
4687
3498
3916
* Based on an unpublished analysis made in 1963 by
the author. Exact figures later than 1963 are not easily
available, but industry sources say there has been little
change in recent years.
also have been interaction with the general draft of
design in other areas. Glass has been used more in
construction, for instance.
The trend to increased use of glass, too, was
self-perpetuating. Once it had been established
that more glass meant a newer car, designers were
forced to try to find ways to use more glass in each
model. The two-door and four-door hardtops, with
no center roof support, became enormously popular
in the 1950s. Connpound windshields, which curved
into the roof as well as from side to side, appeared
on 1960 models.
Meanwhile, this increased use of glass began to
pose difficult heating and cooling problems. Heavy
tinting became necessary. The use of glass eventually peaked out. Table 2 shows the glass area in
Ford and Chevrolet four-door sedans from 1957 to
1963.
The termination of these two trends, length and
lowness and increased use of glass, was predicted
with remarkable accuracy as to date by people in the
industry. Technology imposed limits.
The third trend, integrated design, was also confidently expected to terminate in the early sixties,
but, as mentioned, failed to do so. In this case, however, the limits imposed were not technological.
Instead, the prediction was based on a judgment as
to how far the imagination of designers could carry
a particular fashion. The designers proved able to
carry it further than expected.
"Filling the Cube"
The trend in question was the steady movement
since the 1920s toward integrated design and what
has been called "filling the cube." Looking at cars
over the past four or five decades, one can see that
running boards have disappeared, headlights have
been faired into fenders, and fenders have been
faired into the basic shape of the car. Bumpers
have become integral. License plates have been
recessed. By 1960, it appeared that this trend had
been carried about as far as it could go.
Recent automobiles suggest that the trend to
integrated design is still in full swing. Designers
47
seem simply to have shifted their attention from the
elimination of excrescences to the elimination of
extraneous design features on the surface of the car.
For example, the grille replaced the free-standing
radiator many years ago, an instance of the longterm trend to integrated design. The grille itself,
however, has been eliminated as a design feature
on many current cars: The Corvair, the Corvette,
the Avanti, the XKE Jaguar, and many European
cars. The new plastic integrated grille and bumper
painted to resemble ordinary sheet metal is a step
in the same direction. Similarly, headlight and tail
light pods disappeared long ago, but even after they
had been faired into the body of the car, continued
to exist as extraneous surface design elements. It
is, consequently, another instance of the long-term
trend toward integrated design that headlights are
concealed on many current cars and that tail lights
are camouflaged. Windshield wipers also are now
concealed.
Finally, designers are moving away from the
deeply gouged sculpturing which characterized cars
in the early sixties according to D. R. HoUs in the
March 26, 1962 Automotive News. The trend to
integrated design is still in progress.
The theory that a fashion ends in excess is thus
valuable, as stated, but also dangerous. If the
"excess" is technological or functional, some reliance can be placed upon the theory as a predictor
of fashion change. One should be extremely careful,
however, in placing confidence in any "excess" which
is visual and aesthetic. Who would have thought
that men's shoes in medieval France would have become so long that it would be necessary for men to
tie the toes of their shoes to their knees or shins?
Factors to Consider
The real money in trend reading lies in early detection. The firm which sets a fashion or is early
to exploit it can follow a skimming price policy with
correspondingly high profits. At the same time, the
firm which catches on to a new fashion in its early
stages while its growth is accelerating (either horizontally or vertically) can often carve out a niche in
the market which is more or less impregnable by
the time competitors arrive on the scene. These
competitors may force the early firm to lower its
prices, but the early firm might well be able to maintain its share of the market untouched.
Nevertheless, deciding on the basis of only two
or three points on a time series chart that a trend
is present can be extremely risky. Granny dresses
are an instance. When first introduced, they seemed
to spread like wildfire, especially in Southern California which is often alleged to be a trend-setting
area. A manufacturer who leaped into production
of g'rannj' dresses, however, would have been gravely
disappointed. First, other areas of the country did
not show the same enthusiasm as Southern Cali-
48
fornia, and the spread of the fashion was limited
geographically. Second, the fashion did not spread
beyond girls of junior high school age. Their older
sisters and their mothers did not stai't wearing
granny dresses. The spread of the fashion was thus
limited to a single age group. Even the young girls
who wore grannies often made them themselves. The
fad collapsed quickly and never amounted to very
much.
To jump on a bandwagon too early—before one
knows where it is going—can lead to disastrous
loss. If one waits too long, one can miss the bandwagon altogether. A firm must try to detect trends
early and at the same time try to minimize risk by
guessing at the shape of the curve a particular trend
is likely to follow. There are a few rules of thumb
that might be helpful in deciding whether a fashion
innovation is likely to be a growing trend. All of
the rules of thumb listed below are qualitative and
heuristic rather than analytical and quantitative,
and are less "rules" than factors that people in
fashion industries should take into account in their
decision making.
First, does the innovation meet soine genuine need
or does it have some genuine functional reason for
being? If so, it has a greater chance of success
than simple gimmickry. For instance, the pushbutton transmission introduced on Chrysler products
in the fifties ofi^ered no advantage whatsoever over
the lever on the steering column and actually had
some disadvantages. The driver had to remove his
hand from the wheel to operate the buttons and
sometimes confused the button with his heater controls. The buttons aroused some early interest,
but never really became important.
Contrariwise, the shift dress seemed to fail in the
late fifties, mainly because it was too radical a departure from earlier fashions. Nevertheless, it
offered real benefits. It was easy to put on and take
off, concealed bad figures and accentuated good ones,
made confining girdles less necessary and was consequently more comfortable, was relatively inexpensive to produce and easy to run up on a home sewing
machine, and was equally suitable as a house dress
or for shopping. While it failed to catch on immediately, now, ten years later, it is still a dominant
underlying theme in women's fashion.
Second, what is the nature of the long term trends
within v)hich the particular fashion under consideration happens to exist? It has already been mentioned that automobile styling for many years was
dominated by powerful trends that no manufacturer
could really hope to buck successfully. Chrysler in
the early fifties recognized that a short, high car
offered many practical advantages and tried to fight
the trend toward long, low cars. It failed, and it is
that failure that marked the date of the beginning
of Chrysler's subsequent long" decline.
Third, look at past fashion cycles. Is the trend
Journal of Marketing, July, 1968
to close-fitting slacks for men approaching the limit?
A glance back at the skintight doeskin breeches of
Regency England will assure one that the current
trend may have a long way to go.
Fourth, are there concurrent trends in other industries? One has been mentioned—glass in cars
and glass in architecture. At the present time,
psychedelic art is important in painting, music,
lighting, fabric patterns, home furnishings, refrigerator design, and many other areas. The manufacturer who utilizes this trend is joining a widescale movement with many mutually reinforcing
elements.
Fifth, are there self-limiting factors? These have
already been discussed with emphasis on technological limits, but others should be considered. Is the
fashion likely to be limited geographically? To a
single age group? (Example: granny dresses.) To
avant garde people only? (Example: John Cage
compositions.)
Sixth, inspect the curve. How many points on the
trend line can be plotted? A trend line with many
points charted obviously warrants more confidence
than one with only two or three. Do the points
which can be plotted approximate a clearly defined
line? A nice solid trend line looks better than one
with jiggles in it. Is the curve accelerating or
otherwise changing?
Seventh, consider the dicta of sociologists and
anthropologists on the factors influencing the adoption of a new product or practice. Is the fashion
compatible with the norms, values, and techniques
of the society (or at least lacking in obvious incompatibility) ? How prestigious is the originator?
How complex is the fashion? (That is, can one adopt
it easily, or is some difficult learning process required?) Is the fashion communicable? (Will
people became aware of it?) Is it divisible? (A
"divisible" new fashion product or fashion is one
that can be tried piecemeal. Farmers will accept a
new way of farming much more readily if they can
try it out first on a single small piece of ground
than if they have to replant an entire farm. Similarly, some fashions require that a wardrobe be
completely replaced, while others are divisible and
can be adopted by women in the normal process of
buying one new garment after another.) 6
Eighth, and perhaps most important, is any inside
information available? One person or firm rarely
makes a fashion by itself. The firm in a fashion
industry must be aware of the institutional processes
through which fashions are created. More simply,
it must know what its competitors are planning.
A corollary of this eighth rule is that the nature
of the fashion process probably varies in detail from
industry to industry. A person able to predict
•^ Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New
York: The Free Press, 1962), p. 124.
Cars and Clothing: Understanding Fashion Trends
49
fashion in cars, for instance, might flnd predicting
fashion in jewelry or package design impossible.
the upswing? Is the fashion itself changing in some
specifiable direction?
There are other factors to consider in evaluating
whether a new fashion is likely to become popular.
Is it functional? What long-term trends are operating? What is the character of past fashion
cycles? Are there concurrent trends in other industries? Are there self-limiting factors? Can the
fashion be adopted easily? What inside information is available?
Finally, the firm in a fashion industry has several
built-in protections. One is that lead-times for
many products are long enough that a firm is likely
to hear about pending fashions even if it is not actually trying to do so. (And it usually is.) A
related point is that fashions tend to persist longer
than most people think. People keep refrigerators
and washing machines for ten or more years, and
this population of past products can inhibit rapid
fashion change. This is true also of furniture and
cars, and even, though to a much lesser extent, of
women's clothes.
There is money to be made in understanding
fashion, and money can be lost in misunderstanding
it. Most of the time, however, fashion helps rather
than hurts marketers.
Conclusion
To conclude on the same optimistic note with
which this account began, it is not too hard to keep
in touch with fashion trends. They are usually
nakedly apparent, and ways more or less reliable
exist to confirm those which are less apparent. The
best of these is counting instances of a fashion
through time.
One important point is that both the designer and
the businessman have a contribution to make in the
detection of fashion trends. The designer may
suffer from "cultural hyperaesthesia" and see trends
where none exist. The businessman is rarely a
member of the avant grade and may be inclined to
drag his feet. Both are needed. The Mustang, for
example, is a highly successful compromise between
the advanced European designs proposed by the
stylists working on the car, and the more conventional American designs preferred by management.
That a Fashion moves both horizontally and vertically makes it easier to decide whether or not a
trend is in the making. Two questions to be asked are:
Is the incidence of the fashion in the population on
MARKETING MEMOInnovations
by Ind'ty'tduals . . .
"Some people are apparently afraid to use new ideas, and I don't think it's just
because they are new. It seems to me they feel there is a possibility they may run
out 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 a
magical ability to create ideas simply by willing to do so. And, the more ideas he
creates, the more he will continue to create.
"We should be grateful for the challenges we face, for without challenge man does
not 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.