Read: “Managing Fashion and Luxury Companies”: Chapter 1: 1.1; 1.

What is fashion?
 Art
 Way to express yourself
 Creativity
 Culture: defines a century/generation
 Differences between countries: La vs Virginia
 Question of sustainability
 Practical vs aesthetic
 Trend, Popular, continuously changing

- "There's never a new fashion but it's old."

Continuous reinterpretation of the past

- "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
Planned obsolescence: you make people buy new thing that they don’t need

- "Fashion is not something that exist in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion
has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."
Most of the business is in the accessories, sell experiences

- "Fashions fade, style is eternal"

- pl:. Armani: how to stay contemporary, but still not boring. Using animal prints doesn’t belong
to them, its more like Gucci, DG; so they put it on the for example buttons, not the full dress

- "Fashion is like a fruit, you couldn't eat it a day before and can't eat it a day after, it’s just
about today"
Generations Z, keep the brand aspirational

- "I don’t design clothes. I design dreams"

 Change
 Youth
 Aspiration
  What's going on in the world
 Dreams to people
 Knowing the rules, changing them and making them better

- Fashion is a non -verbal communication

- Fashion = trend

Trickle Down Theory

- trends were started by the aristocracy do differentiate themselves
- fashion trends start among upper class or fashion leaders and move down to the masses
- Fashion is considered a vehicle of conspicuous consumption and upward mobility for those
seeking to copy styles of dress. Once the fashion is adopted by those below, the rich reject that
look

Trickle up Theory/Bubble up
- fashion trends start among the younger or lower income groups and move upward to higher
income groups
- the innovation is initiated from the street
- pl: T-shirts, ripped jeans, leather jackets

Trickle across theory

- community/groups of people, influencers, fashion companies understood that they don’t have
to target everyone, people will follow
- fashion moves horizontally between groups on similar social levels
- the spread of information is accelerated by the media

What is fashion?
- “fashion is merely a product of social demands. […] This is clearly proved by the fact that very
frequently not the slightest reason can be found for the creation of fashion from the standpoint
of an objective, aesthetic or other expediency. […] Judging from the ugly and repugnant things
that are sometimes in vogue, it would seem as though fashion were desirous of exhibiting its
power by getting us to adopt the most atrocious things for its alone.” – Georg Simmel
- Garzani defines fashion as “the more or less changeable usage that, deriving from the prevailing
taste, is imposed on habits, ways of living, and forms of dress”
- fashion is the direct result of both a creative and an industrial process
- a system of innovation engineered to meet and encourage seasonal consumer demand
Fashion cycle
- 4 stages: introduction, growth, maturity, decline
- a period of time between the introduction of a certain fashion (new product) and its
replacement by a new one
- the process of change is driven by the cycle of the seasons and by the fashion cycle
- seasonal change is brought by the industrial, retail and communication system of fashion
- “planned obsolescence” encourages new demand
- change intended as a great product variety and variability over time, is designed to guarantee
the consumer a wide range of choice and the greatest satisfaction
- fashion innovators create the trend and opinion leaders (VIPs) are the first to adopt the new
fashion during the initial stage