subscribe to this page
A sociologist writing in the 1990s, Davis explores how trends are determined. He posits fashion as a cycle, in which popular trends fade into oblivion, only to be resuscitated later. However, this cycle has grown short and fragmented as multiple trends gain popularity at the same time and new trends come into and fade from popularity with increasing speed. Davis seeks to determine what causes the fashion cycle to shift by examining different theories. The first of these theories is the trickle-down theory, which posits creation in the hands of the upper classes. Their styles are eventually copied by the lower classes, and as they are replicated, they no longer become fashionable. Davis criticizes this theory for focusing only on class, arguing instead that fashion is a complex form of personal expression that can reveal one’s age, gender, sexual identity, political leanings, leisure inclinations, religious beliefs and more. Davis also points out that while sociology provides a lens for examining how fashion cycles, it fails to account for what the cycle means.
Instead, Davis favors Blumer’s theory of collective selection, in which fashion is driven by tastes and perpetuated by the need to be fashionable. Taste accounts for fashions rising in both small groups and across the mainstream and is influenced by shared life experiences and common interaction. For Blumer, fashion is tied to “modernism”, which he defines as “restlessness, an openness to new experience and fascination with the new.” Finally, he argues that fashion’s quickly cycling trends serves a useful societal function, in ordering the styles of the present, detaching current trends from outdated ones and preparing the populace for future trends. While this theory seems to represent fashion cycles more accurately than the class-ist model, it too fails to provide a methodology for interpreting the meanings behind various fashion statements. Davis worries that both theories are abstract and outdated, shedding little insight into the complex world of fashion and failing to account for the influence and force of the fashion industries.
Davis’s unease with available theories of fashion cycling point to the size and complexity of forces driving what becomes stylish -- forces which have grown even more complex with the advent of fashion blogs. While theories of trickle-down fashion and collective selection seem problematic even to Davis, they still provide two useful, if incomplete, methods for thinking about fashion in the 21 Century. Trickle-down theory and collective selection represent two ends of the spectrum in which one seeks to understand fashion – in the former, fashion is imposed on the populace from above and they have little or no say control over it, and in the latter, fashion is a bottom up process developed by the masses in response to shared experiences. The privileged fashion elite of the trickle-down theory sound remarkably like Gladwell’s innovators, and the trickle-down effect seems to perfectly describe Gladwell’s adoption of trends. While Gladwell’s theory is based on privileged social knowledge as opposed to class, both theories employ similar mechanisms.
Moreover, Blumer’s model of collective selection seems a precursor to Riekert’s fashion model, in which styles favored by online readers are then translated into market goods. Both posit societal taste as the driving force behind fashion, granting the people agency in determining what becomes popular. Yet while Blumer’s model presents taste as organic, arising from life experience, Riekert portrays taste as the ability to adopt or reject options presented by bloggers and by the trendsetters themselves.
Mencken, Jennifer. A Design for the Copyright of Fashion." Diss. Boston College of Law, 1997.
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/articles/content/1997121201.html#fna
"A Design for the Copyriight of Fashion" was written by Jennifer Mencken in 1997. The essay, though short, covers some very important topics in regards to fashion copyright and protection of designs. The introduction considers that becuase the fashion industry is one of the largests and has no boundaries, economically or socially, it is hard to contain.
Mencken's essay discusses the reasoning behind not protecting designs and talks about the process from thought and conviction to pen and paper, and eventually, to the showroom and the streets. She briefly cites the ability for some fashion designs to be protected under Common Law, however, that angle is now since moot. Though the article was published in 1997, almost ten years ago, most of the information remains pertinent. Mencken discusses patents versus copyright and trademarks verus monopolies on fashion.
She continues to argue for the "Implementation of Fashion Design Copyright." She identifies that there is a "conceptual separability of fashion's artisict elements from the functionality of clothing." She cites the Copyright Act of 1976, allowing the line to be cast that fashion design is almost similar to writing, in respects, to protection. Conceptual separability versus the creative process is a major discussion in the paper.
She closes with a discussion on the scope of copyright and the "requirements for implementation." She says, " In creating a copyright system which recognizes the expressions of designers, many old fears, such as burdening the consumer and creating a marketplace monopoly, resurface. With tens of thousands of designers churning out work, it is easy to foresee chaos. How far does the copyright extend? For how long? What would constitute infringement?"
She closes with a discussion on the effect of copyright in fashion on the industry. She concludes that copyright on fashion should be a decision of the designers rather than the people who purchase their creations.
This article is particularly important to my thesis and argument for my paper as it attacks and answers questions about how copyright in fashion can and will affect the industry. This article is also important as it plays devil's advocate and expresses the concern with copyright and fashion and how the lack of copyright can be seen to have not affected the economic aspects of the industry.