Why do fashion trends come and go?
Why do fashions change? The answer is probably as simple as the fact that people change. Over time, the new replaces the old. People are influenced by popular culture, including athletes, musicians, movie stars, social media, and royalty.
According to the DSN English report on fashion trends, trends repeat every 20-30 years because of “generational changes as well as designers taking inspiration from styles their parents wore.” Children are being influenced by their parents' clothing and seeking inspiration to translate that into “modern” clothing.
Many trends have found themselves dying out as quickly as their fame grew. One of the biggest reasons for these short-lived trends is the rise of social media and influencers. It has caused an increase in trends and a decrease in their lifespan.
In the fashion world, a trend is described as a broad direction in which something is evolving or changing and thus indicates the popularity of a particular sort of style or item of clothing. A micro-fashion trend's cycle typically lasts 3-5 years, but macro-trends often last 5-10 years.
Surprise, surprise, all 20-year cycles more or less. This infographic shows James Laver's law of the fashion cycle. According to James Laver, fashion trends come back every 50 years.
Fashion goes round in circles because it has neither beginning nor end. This argument is evident because fashion changes from time to time and there is a repeat of the same ideas. New fashions are created through the same actions and ideas used in the past.
This is mainly the result of fashion designers deciding to bring back old trends. Designers believed that since these trends were popular at one point, they have a high chance of becoming popular again. So, approximately every twenty years, we see a resurgence of a fashion trend that was once thought to have died out.
Fashion trends are influenced by several factors, including cinema, celebrities, climate, creative explorations, innovations, designs, political, economic, social, and technological.
The fashion trend cycle refers to the process of introducing and popularizing a new trend, which happens in five key stages: introduction, rise, acceptance, decline, and obsolescence.
Fashion trends now start and evolve through five key ways: from the runway, from street style, through celebrities, through fashion bloggers, and through the different fashion capitals of the world.
Do trends last forever?
Fashion Trends stay around for longer – say 3-7 years – they are loved by many and become the staples of most wardrobes and are almost all you can purchase in stores. Trends also relate to the lengths of items such as skirts and dresses (knee-length, midi length, maxi, mini etc.)
What Is the Fashion Cycle? The fashion cycle is a natural cycle by which a fashion trend is introduced, rises to mainstream popularity, declines, and finally gets rejected in the obsolescence stage.
"Typically, trends are on a 20-year cycle before their first re-appearance, which means that late '90s and early 2000s fashion moments will continue to pop up," said Brown.
Cycles and recycles are a common thing in fashion and they happen in precise moments, usually every fifteen years. Always in different ways but nonetheless inspired to a particular era. Fashion repeats itself.
A fashion trend's life cycle can be divided into five stages, generally speaking: introduction, rise, peak, decline, and obsolescence.
- Trickle-down theory.
- Trickle-up theory.
- Trickle-across theory.
In the interrupted type of cycle, consumer acceptance and purchasing makes fashion ever-changing. Fashion is always influenced by various factors, so is the fashion cycle. Some cycles get interrupted or prolonged by recession, war, or the viruses like the COVID-19.
Often referred to as the “20-year rule”, the cyclical concept that every 20 years or so the trends that were once popular will begin to be on the forefront again. Although, with the rise in social media, the trend cycle is being cut shorter and shorter.
History has a tendency to repeat itself, especially in the fashion industry. According to the American Marketing Association, this is due to the “distinctiveness” part of the cycle where the trend is highly sought after. Trends from decades ago still appear on front cover of fashion magazines.
From glam rock to disco, designers can't get enough of the decade's revolutionary styles. As the return of Uggs, flared pants, and baby tees have taught us, fashion is cyclical, and no decade has gotten as much attention in recent years as the 1970s.
Why do trends exist?
Trends exist "because they satisfy some very basic needs in all of us: the need for communicating social identity and the collective need for making sense of the world," says Maria Mackinney-Valentin, a fashion and trend scholar at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen.
The start of any trend can be found with the Innovators. These individuals make up about 2.5 percent of the population. Often outsiders to the mainstream culture they are responsible for their own strange mutations. These can become new trends if taken on by the Early Adopters.
Fashion is more than amped up dress up for adults. It's a reflection of who we are and what we believe. The fashion industry contributes to society by allowing us to express ourselves, our creativity and our beliefs to the world.
'According to the old rule, fashion trends run in 20-year cycles. 'Thanks to media archives, it is easy to retrieve all concepts and see how they have come in fashion, 20 years later. ' The good news is if you hate the Y2K style, give it a year or so and other trends will be borrowed and reclaimed.
To accurately predict fashion trends one must observe and analyse social cultural movements to project a short, medium or long term impact on the direction of fashion. Trend forecasters use a mixture of intuition, research and data to create a scenario which they then communicate through writing and mood boards.
What influences a trend? Social media and influencers with 140 million followers (phew Kim Kardashian West), everything from music and movies to politics (yes, really), sub-cultures and kids on the street now influence fashion forecasters.
Now More Clothing Can Be, Too. Designers and tech start-ups are working to improve sustainability and interrupt the path to the landfill.
Before we understand why trends come back every 20 years, we first need to explain how the trend cycle actually works.
Conventional wisdom in the fashion industry declares that trends cycle every 20 years. This cycle, however, is now an imprecise and fairly useless measure of trends. Social media has placed a spotlight on fashion around the world, proving that styles from every decade now have a place in the average person's wardrobe.
The Y2K aesthetic is radically distinctive and inspired by the mid-'90s and early 2000s when the internet became more popular, during the dot-com boom. This style is typically quite futuristic with a slightly retro edge – think shiny materials, chunky sneakers, pleated skirts, baguette bags, and colorful sunglasses.
