The Fashion Store

Fashion is everywhere, even science is not immune to it. Creativity research, for instance, was “fashionable” in the second half of the 20^th  century, and this blog is floating on the still trendy topic of brain training. We will focus on fashion, defined as the latest style of clothing, mainly because of its universality – each of us is to some extent involved in it, not just as a consumer, but also in expressing our style: elegance and lavishness or disregard and indifference. As stressed by Washington Post fashion columnist Robin Givhan[1] in the movie “Hotel Rwanda”, a suit and tie provide reassurance to Paul Rusesabagina even as his country collapses in bloody genocide and his luxury hotel is transformed into a refugee camp. This makes fashion the right candidate to be analyzed as a tangible example of creative production.  Furthermore, fashion relates to creativity on a personal (the discovery is novel to the individual) and historical (the discovery is novel for the entire culture/society) level. On the one hand, this is reflected in one’s choice of a specific dress or tie, and on the other, the extravagance of Bernhard Willhelm’s avant-garde designs. Yet another characteristic of fashion design is that creativity exists at multiple levels of product development (Ruppert-Stroescu and Hawley, 2014).

History
According to Kawamura (2005) fashion is a social institution, which regulates the alternation of cyclical changes in dress styles. This implies two main characteristics: constant change in styles, and the freedom of individuals to follow changes without institutional restrictions. As such it is considered unique to Western civilization, not found in Asian cultures (Belfanti, 2008).

In Europe fashion gradually developed between the 17^th and 18^th century. The seventeenth century was dominated by the rise of France as the greatest power in the region, the creation of the Dutch Republic and Netherlands, accompanied by economic prosperity and the continuous expansion of the middle class. Important for the development of fashion was also the decline of sumptuary laws[2] (Pendergast et al., 2003). Due to these factors, clothing worn during the seventeenth century was influenced by fashion trends as never before. Clothes went from restrictive to comfortable and back to restrictive. Ornament was replaced by elegance and added back to clothing for both men and women. In 1672, the first fashion magazine Mercure Galant was published. The 18^th century clothing was characterized by the development of skill of tailors and dressmakers. Monarch were no longer the only trendsetters of fashion. However, at the end of the century clothing styles began to simplify as fashion was to a greater extent inspired by nature. The Incroyables (the Unbelievables – men) and the Merveilleuses (the Marvelous – women) were the first examples of the use of fashion as rebellion against the luxurious styles that had been worn in the court of King Louis XVI (Pendergast et al., 2003). The dramatic change of dress in the 19^th century was mainly influenced by the introduction of machines that sped up the production process. Charles Frederick Worth (1825–1895) became the first world famous fashion designer employing the principles of design and fashion called “haute couture”. Especially women’s clothing shifted dramatically throughout the century continuing to do so till present days. In contrast, men’s styles at the end of the century laid the foundation for clothing prevailing the centuries to come. The 20^th century was dominated by a diversity of fashion styles (e.g., rock ‘n’ roll, hippie look; punk, disco, grunge, goth), the creation of new cloth (bikini, miniskirts, designer jeans, sweatshirts, polar fleece),  materials (spandex or lycra, Gore-Tex) and the introduction of ready-to-wear clothing. All of these were provided by fashion designers form Europe, like Giorgio Armani, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, the USA, like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and Japan, such as Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto. People also had a huge range of choices where to buy their clothes, from designer stores (Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein), mid-range specialty retailers (Gap and Old Navy) to mail order catalogs (J. Crew, Lands’ End, and L. L. Bean), or discounters (K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Target). Today the fashion industry is an important commercial enterprise in the global marketplace. In 2011, the World Trade Organization listed on its website that in 2010, textiles and clothing alone contributed US$602 billion to world trade and represented 4.1 percent of the world’s merchandise exports (Ruppert-Stroescu and Hawley, 2014). Recently the enterprise has shown a slight (8%) decline in trade.

In contrast, no similar development of fashion could be observed in the refined civilizations of the East, albeit fashion probably was a Chinese invention, dating from the age of the Tang dynasty (Belfanti, 2008). The main hindrance for fashion development in the East was a rather strict regulation what common folk and nobility could wear, thus clothing was a constant that did not change for centuries. Consider, for instance, the longevity of the sari in India. In China the combination of fabrics and colors made up the social hierarchy. For the emperor, although he could wear any color, yellow was the favorite reserved solely for the monarch. Nobles wore blue and brown, and mandarins blue and black. Female clothing followed the same rules as that for men. This marginal role of females is seen as yet another reason that there was no real development of fashion. Also in Japan the style of the kimono did not undergo big changes from its T shape, except for the obi which tied the kimono at the waist and the colors, of the decorative materials, and the fabric used.

Summarizing this brief historical review indicates that although fashion was probably not a European invention the tremendous development of fashion was exclusively a European affair.

Creativity in fashion design

Recently fashion has also become the subject of scientific research, particularly the study of the creative design process that brings up gorgeous fashion artefacts (e.g., Eckert and Stacey, 2003; Ruppert-Stroescu and Hawley, 2014; Cirella, 2016).  From a methodological viewpoint the studies mostly rely on prolonged interviews of designers, trend forecasters, and industry executives, and by observations of day‐to‐day designing activities in renowned brands of the luxury fashion industry.

In a series of papers Eckert and Stacey (2003) analyzed how sources of inspiration are used in commercial knitwear design. Although knitwear production takes place outside of Europe, design is still carried out in Europe. The characteristic of the industry is that garments need to be produced to tight price points, as well as rigid deadlines. A second characteristic is that the process is shared between knitwear designers (aesthetic aspects), and the knitting machine technicians (responsible for programming computer‐controlled knitting machines). The former are often well-educated females, while the latter are often males, who have no education beyond secondary school, and are mainly trained by their employers with whom they remain for a long time period, which is opposite to designers, who show less job stability (the data are for the UK). The study revealed that the design of new garments is mostly based on the adaptation of earlier deigns, enriched by different sources of inspiration. These sources  can be other garments (competitors’ products, swatches),  fashion photographs of catwalk shows, artefacts (ornaments, motifs in tails and mosaiques, embroideries, carpets, art and design books), nature and yarns determining the garment texture. It was further found that the adaptation process can have two main forms, a top-down where an abstract concept guides the process, or a bottom-up where the visual elements in the source itself suggest the form of the design. Usually the most salient feature of the source is used in the new design. Another striking finding of the study was that sources of inspiration did not differ between companies ranging from cheap mail order houses to the world’s leading design companies.  

The objective of the study by Ruppert-Stroescu and Hawley (2014) was to elucidate the function of the creative process for design and development in the global fashion industry of the 21st century. The study revealed two extremes in the continuum of fashion design creativity: leadership and adaptive creativity. “Leadership Creativity overrules current archetypes and shifts the sector in a new direction while Adaptive Creativity integrates existing paradigms into a direction the sector is already trending” (Ruppert-Stroescu and Hawley, 2014, p. 10). This bipolar typology was differently influenced by eight identified attributes: (1) research and development, (2) selling price, (3) nature of the product, (4) consumer taste level, (5) technique, (6) number of designs created and reproduced in a season, (7) consumer perception and life cycle of the product, and (8) source of design inspiration.  For most of the attributes the word high is related to leadership creativity and low to adaptive creativity (attributes 1 to 5).  On the other hand, leadership creativity is characterized by low numbers of designs with extended durability, although most often worn just once, inspired by abstract sources. Based on these criteria the authors classified some of the early 21st century fashion industry representatives. On the left side we find brands such as Alexander McQueen, Roberto Cavalli, Karl Lagerfeld, Anne Valerie Hash. Some brands associated with adaptive creativity were Zara, Banana Republic, Gap, H&M. A combination of leadership creativity with adaptive creativity was observed in brands such as Kenzo,  Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan.

Yet another characteristic of the creative process in fashion design is the involvement of a large number of people from different disciplines that have to work together to solve problems. Although similar to the multidisciplinary approach in science, the product is much more dependent on this collaborative process which involves a greater number of participants with a more diverse educational background than it is the case in science. The paper by Cirella (2016) addressed collective creativity within the fashion industry with the aim of providing an explanation of how this process can be purposefully managed. The study investigated the influence of 5 organizational variables identified in different studies that might influence collective creativity: (1) structured processes with specific tasks, activities and roles for the members, including the definition of the task, related phases of the work process, and roles for the members, (2) team diversity - the combination of individuals with different competencies, experiences and roles, (3) boundary openness in terms of interactions between team and non-team individuals, (4) resources available to the team such as physical space, budget and time, and (5) technological support, including technical competencies, groupware and specific hardware/software. An additional research question was the relation between collective creativity and individual creativity and their influence on consumer satisfaction. The results showed a significant relation between collective creativity and the organizational variables of structured processes and technological support, while for the other three variables there was no significant relation with collective creativity. Furthermore, there was a positive correlation between individual and collective creativity, although the relation with consumer satisfaction was negative for the former and positive for the latter.

The extreme competition and time constraints the fashion industry faces have made it open to new technologies that would aid the creative process. In a recent paper Khajeh et al. (2016) introduced an interactive genetic algorithm for the production of clothes designs. The genetic algorithm was inspired by the nature of living organisms (evolutionary algorithm).  The algorithm uses two types of data: clothes designs (top, collar, skirt, belt, blouse, sleeve and shoe with 10 different designs each) and fabric patterns (80 various patterns) allowing for approximately 10^8 designs. The designed clothes were then presented to users for evaluation (fitness test of the designs created) and used for the design of the next generation of items.

This brief fashion digression shows how the creative process works in real world settings.

References

Cirella, S. (2016). Organizational Variables for Developing Collective Creativity in Business: A Case from an Italian Fashion Design Company: COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS. Creativity and Innovation Management, 25(3), 331–343. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12189

Eckert, C., & Stacey, M. (2003). Sources of inspiration in industrial practice: The case of knitwear design. Retrieved from https://www.dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/3871

Kawamura, Y. (2005). Fashion-ology: an introduction to fashion studies. Oxford ; New York: Berg.

Khajeh, M., Payvandy, P., & Derakhshan, S. J. (2016). Fashion set design with an emphasis on fabric composition using the interactive genetic algorithm. Fashion and Textiles, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-016-0061-1

Marco Belfanti, C. (2008). Was fashion a European invention? Journal of Global History, 3(03), 419. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022808002787

Pendergast, S., Pendergast, T., & Hermsen, S. (2003). Fashion, costume, and culture: clothing, headwear, body decorations, and footwear through the ages. Detroit: UXL.

Ruppert-Stroescu, M., & Hawley, J. M. (2014). A Typology of Creativity in Fashion Design and Development. Fashion Practice: The Journal of Design, Creative Process & the Fashion, 6(1), 9–36. https://doi.org/10.2752/175693814X13916967094759

 

[1] Pulitzer Prize (2006) “for her witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism.”

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[2] Laws that regulate the types and styles of clothing, as well as other luxuries that could be worn by certain people. 

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