persistent dimensions of women's evening dress, a mathematical
model derived elsewhere (Lowe and Lowe 1982) was
tested against new data extending to 1980 to determine
its predictability. The fashion process in women's
dress appears to be predictable, but just barely.
Tue problem to be addressed in this paper is: how predictable
is fashion change? Tlie fashion process is
rather ubiquitous, influencing activities ranging from
medical practice and social theory to the purchasing of
a vast array of con.sumer products. The extent to which
fashion operates in any of t'lese realms is a matter of
degree, but one can argue that the fashion process
achieve.s its gre.atest dominance in the area of women's
dress. Nor is it a new phenomenon; as William
Shakespeare wrote, "Fashion wears out more clothes than
the mai."
Methodology and Data Base
Utilizing fashion publications, a year-to-year record
of dress exists, stretching hack to the French
Revolution. Data include metrical measurements of six
persistent dimensions of women's formal evening attire,
including skirt length and width, waist length and
width, and decolletage length and width. Data for the
period 1789 to 1936 were compiled by two anthropologies
ts, Alfred Kroeber and Jane Richardson (Richardson
and Kroeber 1940). Using the same method of selecting
fashion plates and obtaining measurements, we extended
the data base to 1980. A 5-year overlap of data from
1932 to 1936 passed statistical tests for comparability.
All six dress dimensions were converted to ratios of the
dimensions, divided by the total height of the figure to
provide comparability of data. The total height was
measured from the center of the mouth to the tip of the
toe bearing weight or to the center of the skirt if no
feet were visible, thus eliminating problems associated
with changing hair styles. Briefly stated, skirt length
was measured from the mouth to hem of the skirt at
center front; waist length from mouth to narrowest part
at waist along center front; decolletage length from
mouth to middle of neckline at cent'^r front. sheath bridal gown , Skirt
width was measured as the diameter of the skirt at the
hem; waist width as the width at the minimum area of
the waist; and decolletage width as the distance
between inside edges of the dress at the shoulder
line. A number of measurements were taken every year
for each dress dimension and means were computed.
Limita tions
This study focuses on women's formal evening dress,
presumably that area of women's dress where sytlistic
change plays its greatest role and continuity with the
past is strongest.
The data set consists of haute couture plates, not
actual consumer choices. The yearly means for each
dress dimen.sion are not measures of what the populatioi
,)t large was wearing but rather depict a kind of ide^il,
what the purveyors of high fashion thought women ought
to be wearing. Obviously the measures are related, but
the data examined here may best be thought of as an
underlying conceptual structure on which local and
idiosyncratic transformations are made according to
taste, and, as this structure alters, .so too do
individual .and local behavior. lhe few studies that
have been made, comparing the two (for instance Jack and
Schiffer 1948), indicate that Fashion change in New York
City, Muncie, Indiana, or Butte, Montana follows the
same general trajectory as the high fashion ideal,
though attenuated and perhaps Lagged in time.
The fashion process may be tliought of as consisting of
two components: (1) mechanisms which generate new
innovations . Japanese school uniforms . and select among them, and (2) a diffusion
process governing the spread of new forms. Each has
its ragjlarities, at least of a statistical nature.
Tn this country, for example, southern California is a
recurrent spawning ground for fashions in popular
culture. In this paper, however, we will concentrate on
regularities in the first component, the generation of
new conceptual patterns from old ones.
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