Group Poster- How Fashion Travels

Trickle Down is the oldest theory on how fashion moved. The theory reasons: rich people adopt a certain fashion in order to differentiate themselves from the poor, the lower classes start emulating that fashion to prove that they are rich, so the rich choose another fashion so they can continue to be different from the poor, and thus the cycle repeats. This theory is the most compelling theory for historic fashions, unfortunately we do not have enough information on lower class clothing to be able to tell. The history of the 17th and 18th century in the United States seems to show that this is true, but it definitely has less of a sway over modern fashions. Social/fashion leaders now have more of a sway than people who are rich and not in the spotlight.

Here is a picture of my poster on this theory:

I, however, personally feel that fashion is everywhere and that no one theory (of the trickle-down, trickle up, and mass-market theories) are correct. I prefer to consider the water-cycle as the best way to describe it. I call it the water-cycle fashion theory.

Look at this picture of the water cycle. Fashion is like water. Elites are like the sky and clouds, they trickle their style down or it comes in downpours. Evaporation is fashion among lower classes that is broken down and used by the elites in a modified style. Fashion is also free to move around elite groups or to move around the masses just like vapor transport, rivers, ground water flow, and other artificial movements of water transport water. This also means that fashion moves naturally and that it can also be moved artificially. And just like water, fashion is everywhere. It can take the form of liquid, gas, or solid; it can be within other objects (like influence from architecture or nature); and it is in everyone's life whether or not they care for it.