Fashion-cycle timing is set by how fast a culture consumes and forgets

Evidence

James Laver published a now famous chart outlining how evaluations of a certain fashion trend change over time: … Laver’s analysis may be more tongue-in-cheek than exact science, but it illustrates that our aesthetic judgments are always made in a temporal context. The eerie accuracy of Laver’s time intervals can be attributed to how they match particular moments in the diffusion process—when innovation angers the mainstream, when cachet is injected, when status value decreases, when historical value emerges. The sequence of events may be nearly universal, but the length of each stage depends on the particular fashion cycle. For all the conventional wisdom that styles return after twenty to twenty-five years, a mere decade passed between fifties doo-wop and Sha Na Na’s retro parody. The timing is always contingent upon how quickly we consume and forget. In the 1960s, rising incomes, the diffusion of new technologies like TV and radio, and a youth generation striving for difference from their parents created conditions for extremely rapid change, which then in turn shortened the time required for full abandonment. By 1968 the fifties felt like the distant past. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 682

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Older conventions get chosen because they lower social risk — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 646; Retro revivals are always tamer than their originals — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 678; Fashion recurs cyclically because old forms regain the charm of difference once forgotten — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 743 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Fashion recurs cyclically because old forms regain the charm of difference once forgotten #expands (0.95) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 743
• Progress narratives fail to explain fast cultural changes like crazes #responds-to (0.85) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 520
• Pre-modern cultural influence spread so slowly it could arrive centuries out of date #corroborates (0.85) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 943
• Cultural stasis is constant novelty without ordered sequential change #complicates (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 18