Large-scale diffusion processes such as those affecting fashionable clothing are difficult to study systematically. This article assesses the relevance of top-down as compared to bottom-up models of diffusion for fashion. Changes in the relationships between fashion organizations and their publics have affected what is diffused, how it is diffused, and to whom. Originally, fashion design was centered in Paris; designers created clothes for local clients, but styles were diffused to many other countries. This highly centralized system has been replaced by a system in which fashion designers in several countries create designs for small publics in global markets, but their organizations make their profits from luxury products other than clothing. Trends are set by fashion forecasters, fashion editors, and department store buyers. Industrial manufacturers are consumer driven, and market trends originate in many types of social groups, including adolescent urban subcultures. Consequently, fashion emanates from many sources and diffuses in various ways to different publics.
[1]
F. Davis.
Fashion, culture, and identity
,
1991
.
[2]
Victoria,et al.
Surfers Soulies Skinheads and Skaters: Subcultural Style from the Forties to the Nineties
,
1996
.
[3]
Diana Crane,et al.
Globalization, organizational size, and innovation in the French luxury fashion industry: Production of culture theory revisited
,
1997
.
[4]
George A. Field,et al.
The status float phenomenon The upward diffusion of innovation
,
1970
.
[5]
Bernard Barber,et al.
“Fashion” in Women's Clothes and the American Social System
,
1952
.
[6]
Michael R. Solomon,et al.
The psychology of fashion
,
1985
.
[7]
Marylène Delbourg-Delphis.
Le chic et le look : histoire de la mode féminine et des mœurs, de 1850 à nos jours
,
1981
.
[8]
D. Crane.
Clothing Behavior as Non-Verbal Resistance: Marginal Women and Alternative Dress in the Nineteenth Century
,
1999
.
[9]
Elihu Katz,et al.
Notes on a Natural History of Fads
,
1957,
American Journal of Sociology.