The Meaning of Fashion How the Danish Fashion Consumer Understands and Consumes Fashion and Fashion Trends
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MASTERS THESIS CBS MAY 18 TH, 2011 THE MEANING OF FASHION HOW THE DANISH FASHION CONSUMER UNDERSTANDS AND CONSUMES FASHION AND FASHION TRENDS Jekaterina V. Lysenko MSoc. Sc. Management of Creative Business Processes Michael T. Hansen Cand.merc.IMM Adviser: Heidi Boye, Department of Marketing Worcount 221.261 1 Resume As the fashion system today has become more complex, and democratised, and because businesses have lost some of their poser to dictate trends to fashion consumers, the purpose of this thesis has been to explores the central characteristics of the Danish fashion consumer in the contemporary society. The intention of this study has been to obtain an empirical and theoretical understanding of how the Danish fashion consumer ascribes meaning to fashion, fashion consumption and fashion trends. The phenomenon oyf fashion trends, and how the affect the personal fashion taste and style of consumer has been a specific interest for the thesis. By applying the theory of the hypermodern society and fashion consumer, the thesis has established the Danish fashion consumer as a hypermodern consumer, who uses fashion to construct and communicate his/ her identity, but most of – to feel pleasure. However, contrary to hypermodern though, Danish fashion consumers also employ fashion in an attempt to distinct them selves from communities of lower classes. The thesis has also found that fashion consumers in Denmark, still use fashion to communicate status, and that status today is connected to dimensions of individuality, uniqueness, originality, and courage, rather than economic recourses. Consumers rarely admit that they adopt trends or find inspiration in these. However in the adoption of new trends, consumer judge the trend by how early (or late) it is in the trend-cycle, who wears the style of the trend, in which shops it can be bought, where the trend is positioned geographically and how the trend is adopted in their nearby social network. Contents 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 2 2. Research question and motivation.................................................................................. 4 2.1. Motivation................................................................................................................ 4 2.2. Research question .................................................................................................... 5 3. Definitions....................................................................................................................... 5 3. Method and data collection ............................................................................................ 7 4.1. Research philosophy ................................................................................................ 7 4.2. Research strategy ..................................................................................................... 8 4.5. How theory was applied to research...................................................................... 10 4.4. Delimitations.......................................................................................................... 14 4.6. Quantitative research............................................................................................. 15 4.7. Qualitative Research.............................................................................................. 18 5. Theory........................................................................................................................... 21 5.1.The concept of fashion and the fashion consumer ................................................. 22 5.2. Society and Consumption...................................................................................... 25 5.3 Characteristics of the hyper-modern individual and consumption ........................ 41 5.4. Fashion, taste and trends........................................................................................ 48 6. Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 60 6.1. Defining fashion..................................................................................................... 60 6.2. Fashion and me: consuming fashion...................................................................... 73 6.3. Analysis of taste...................................................................................................... 84 7. Concluding comments .................................................................................................. 93 8. Research perspectives ................................................................................................... 94 9. Works cited ................................................................................................................... 95 1. Introduction The fashion industry, as with other creative industries, has always had a large failure rate in producing according to changing consumer tastes (Kawamura, 2005; 92), described by Richard Caves as the "nobody knows" principle (as in: nobody knows what will be the next hit). Fashion is a phenomenon in constant motion and a fashion house must renew its design season after season. This is the logic of the fashion system (Kawamura, 2005): Fashion businesses attempt to meet these obstacles by building up their design around designers who are highly creative, skilled craftsmen, business sassy and have a feeling for pinning down cultural, artistic and societal tendencies. If the designer furthermore brings with him/her an interesting personality, such as John Galliano (for Dior), Karl Lagerfeldt (for Chanel), or Henrik Vibskov, the business has struck luck. Due to the high level of 2 market uncertainty, fashion businesses have long practiced the art of forecasting, trend- spotting and coolhunting (Ekström, 2010; 335-36). Through this method, businesses attempt to understand new cultural and societal tendencies, which might play a role in the social selection process of “the look of the season”. Finally, businesses have earlier had the advantages to be somewhat able to control new looks and innovations in fashion, and the diffusion thereof. Since the time when fashion as we know it today appeared in the mid-19th century and until the mid-20th century, the fashion innovation and adoption processes, were rather static (Crane, 2000). Only few outside the fashion industry had a say in what was the current and next fashion look. Fashion magazines and advertisers were next in line, communicating the new looks, while the public was last in line as mere adopters of the ideas of creative fashion geniuses. In the 1960’s and 70’s,the young generation rebelled against this conservative process, and new styles from youth and sub- cultures, such as the mod and punk looks, bubbled up to transform the old logic of the fashion innovation and diffusion processes (Wood, 2006). Lately, this tendency of democratization of fashion innovation and adoption appears to become even more dominant (Hinen & Bruce, 2007). While it, in the 1980’s and 90’s, was “in vogue” to show how one could afford to wear all designer brands, a true “fashionista”1 today creatively combines H&M with Chanel or dresses herself in vintage clothing. In this sense, other than the rich can afford to become fashion leaders. Even the speed and variety of changes, seems to increase every year, as fast-fashion businesses such as H&M and Zara, spit out new collections every other week (Barnes & Greenwood, 2006). Fashion consumers appear to be constantly inventing and re-inventing themselves, and become more risk-oriented than fashion consumers in the last century (Mckelvey & Munslow, 2008). One example of this development is the character of Carrie from the popular American TV-show “Sex and the City”. Carrie, a contemporary fashion icon, epitomizes the look of a fine lady one day and the look of a sex bomb the next (Wildman, 2004). She combines cheap clothes with extremely expensive fashion items, and classic vintage fashion with the newest trends. Of course, we do not all look like Carrie. Most of us would probably argue that we prefer a classic, but contemporary look, which can be varied according to context. Nonetheless, the abovementioned tendencies have been 1 A “fashionista” is according to the “a devoted follower is fashion”. This is a positive characterization, whereas the “fashion victim” defines the fashion devotee in negative terms. 3 observed and deemed problematic by businesses and researchers, who argue that it has become trickier to pin down segments and define “core consumers”. (Sharma, 2006 & Macinnis, 2008) Also, there are signs that consumers have become more sceptic in regards to the traditional diffusers of fashion taste. The customary arbiters of “good fashion taste” — fashion editors and journalists—seem to have lost some of their influence defining the most important looks and trends of the season to bloggers and celebrities (McDowell, 2010, Lynge-Jorlén, 2010, Klit 2010,). Designers and fashion companies themselves might communicate that their dominant objective is to make revolutionary and artistic design to support African cotton agriculture communities by paying fair wages or to sustain the environment by producing organic clothing, but consumers understand that the logic of businesses is also make money and to make consumers buy their products (Holdt, 2004). All in all, it appears