Contemporary innovations of consumer products aim to respond to their usefulness today and need to respond to consumers’ aesthetic value. The reality of innovations is most experienced in fashion. Fashion does not only fulfill its functional purpose but also individuals' need for beauty (Fu &Yuan, 2019). Fashion in today’s consumer culture, therefore, is beyond mere functional utility (Barnard, 2010). It is common to witness fading meanings attributed to fashion as time makes the meanings they convey obsolete and outdated. These observations support the opinion of Tran, Hsuan, and Mahnke (2011) that the realization of the fast-changing fashion trend has necessitated companies to conform to real-time fashion changes. Companies have to devise and embrace strategies to match the rate of transformation in cultural meanings attributed to fashion and design for their commercial interests to be met. Such is the situation in the fashion industry that is in a constant state of reforms. In that regard, therefore, this paper presents an analysis of contemporary fashion trends to demonstrate that fashion in the modern world is a symbolic manifestation of culture with highly symbolic but fast-changing meanings.
Fashion responds to short-lived tastes and preferences, representing meanings specific to a particular time. Such social-cultural aspects are evident in peoples' sense of taste in a particular genre of music, a generation's fanfare over a specific television program, personal liking for certain clothing and footwear, and several other aspects of human culture (Cho & Lee, 2005). From the observation of social-cultural representation of human culture, modern-day fashion culture is no exception to the timeliness of fashion, which has almost always been reflected in a tendency to change with time continuously. The rationale is that fashion encompasses time-specific meanings which tend to change (Fu & Yuan, 2019). This explains the reason a particular type of clothing may be regarded as representing affluence or a relatively high social status at a specific point in time only for the meaning to fade in favor of new brands with a more pronounced cultural meaning of affluence.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The meanings attributed to particular clothing fashion is culturally-specific. It implies that, while a specific dressing code may be regarded to reflect an individual's social status, the dressing code could lose meaning in a different culture. Individuals’ choice of clothing, for instance, is based on the meanings ascribed to them (Barnard, 2010). From a cultural standpoint, it is evident that consumers have a behavior of making statements to their society regarding who they are or not through their clothing or fashion. Fashion, therefore, can be understood to be a way of non-verbal communication through which individuals convey who they want to be believed to be (Hokkanen, 2014). Fashion can, thus, be a way through which consumers express themselves to society.
Fashion brands are an essential way of connoting membership to a particular social group. It can denote associations with distinct reference groups augmented by the symbolizing of particular images attached by consumers to products, particularly fans of a particular sport. When considered from a social standpoint, fashion is an essential instrument through which individuals can subvert or confirm socially-ascribed perceptions regarding their identity. Precisely, the visual statements that an individual’s fashionable clothing or makeup communicate are a crucial way through which the very individuals proclaim or denounce their membership of a particular social group. Fashion items such as clothing could symbolize social identity and a sense of belonging to certain social groupings.
It is justified to view clothes as a representation of an individual or group's social identity, thereby, symbolizing values espoused by particular social groups. Fashion can be a crucial way of showing affluence based on a specific social status; it may portray an individual as belonging to. Branded fashion should, therefore, be viewed as being a vital way of representing or communicate membership to a particular social group or denouncing membership to certain social groups. Fashionable products should thus be considered as fulfilling the role of symbolic objects because the symbolic function of value attributed to them includes their real and imaginary value. While the marketer communicates the socially-designed meaning of a product, their absence would thus deprive fashionable products, their cultural significance. Fashion, therefore, is essentially an attribute of human culture.
Figure 1: Showing a Spring 2018 Campaign Ad by Untuckit
Source: https://wwd.com/business-news/marketing-promotion/gallery/the-best-fashion-ad-campaigns-spring-2018-11083452/
References
Barnard, M. (2010). Fashion statements: Communication and culture. In Fashion Statements (pp. 23-34). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Cho, H. S., & Lee, J. (2005). Development of a macroscopic model on recent fashion trends on the basis of consumer emotion. International Journal of Consumer Studies , 29 (1), 17-33.
Fu, Y., & Yuan, R. (2019). Fashion Design and Fashion Culture. Journal of Arts and Humanities , 8 (4), 01-05.
Hokkanen, S. (2014). Fashion Brands and Consumption in Postmodern Consumer Culture. The Construction of Self and Social Identities . Swedish School of Textiles.
Tran, Y., Hsuan, J., & Mahnke, V. (2011). How Do Innovation Intermediaries Add Value? Insight from New Product Development in Fashion Markets. R&D Management , 41 (1), 80-91.
