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Now that we’ve gotten a good degree of milage out of signaling theory, it’s time to focus on the other reality of social consumption – individual expression and identity. I believe that, beyond being a superficial indulgence or a proxy class war, fashion plays a positive role in stirring people to experiment and play with their identity and effectively drives them towards new experiences and personal growth.
Miscmash touched on this topic earlier, and I think that his comment cuts straight to the heart of the issue.
Whilst designer fashion does tend to resemble the innovator-laggard type cycle you describe, the street fashion system seems to be far more about curation and fine-tuning a longer term identity project.
Outside the tents at Bryant Park, fashion is adopted for both individual and social reasons. I’ve already addressed how signaling motivations affect the demand for fashion, but the next step is to understand how those motivations interact with consumption driven by personal taste and identity to produce aggregate fashion consumption patterns…