Fashion Cycle | Steps of Fashion Cycles

Fashion Cycles & Its Steps
Noor Ahmed Raaz
B.Sc. in Apparel Manufacturing
Noakhali Textile Engineering College
Facebook: Raaz Noor
Mobile: +8801722797194

Fashion Cycles:
Consumers are exposed each season to a multitude of new styles created by fashion designers. Some are rejected immediately by the press or by the buyer on the retail level, but others are accepted for a time, as demonstrated by consumers purchasing and wearing them.
Fashion cycle
The way in which fashion changes is usually described as a fashion cycle. It is difficult to categorize or theorize about fashion without oversimplifying. Even so, the fashion cycle is usually depicted as a bell shaped curve encompassing five stages: introduction, rise in popularity, peak of popularity, decline in popularity, and rejection. The cycle can reflect the acceptance of a single style from one designer or a general style such as the miniskirt.

1. Introduction of a Style:  
Designers interpret their research and creative ideas into appeal or accessories and then offer the new styles to the public. Designers create new designs by changing elements such as line, shape, color , fabric, and details and their relationship to one another. New creations referred to as the “latest fashions” may not yet be accepted by anyone. At this first stage of the cycle, fashion implies only style and newness.

Most new styles are introduced at a high price level. Designers who are globally respected for their talent may be given financial backing and be allowed to design with very few limitations on creativity, quality of raw materials, or amount of fine workmanship. Naturally, production costs are high, and only a few people can afford the resulting garments. Production in small quantities gives a designer more freedom, flexibility, and room for creativity.

2. Increase in Popularity:
If a new style is purchased, worn, and seen by many people, it may attract the attention of buyers, the press, and the public. In self-defense, most couture and high – priced designers now have secondary bridge and or diffusion lines that sell at lower prices, so that they can sell their designs in greater quantities.

The popularity of a style may further increase through copying and adaptation. Some designers or stylists may modify a popular style to suit the needs and price range of their own customers. Some manufacturers may copy it with less expensive fabric and less detail it order to all the style at lower prices.

3. Peak of Popularity:
When a fashion is at the height of its popularity, it may be in such demand that many manufacturers copy it or produce adaptations of it at many price levels. Some designers are flattered by copying and others are resentful. There is very fine line between adaptations and knockoffs.

Volume production requires a likelihood of mass acceptance. Therefore, volume manufacturers carefully study sales trends because their customers want clothes that are in the mainstream of fashion.

4. Decline in Popularity:
Eventually, so many copies are mass produced that fashion –conscious people tire of the style and begin to look for something new. Consumers still wear garments in the style, but they are no longer willing to buy them at regular prices. Retail stores put such declining styles on sale racks, hoping to make room for new merchandise.

5. Rejection of a Style or Obsolescence:
In the last phase of the fashion cycle, some consumers have already turned to new looks, thus beginning a new cycle. The rejection or discarding of a style just because it is out of fashion is called consumer obsolescence. As early as 1600, Shakespeare wrote that “fashion wears out more apparel than the man”. 


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