The history of fashion is marked by a handful of people that were true visionaries and could anticipate fashion trends. These iconic designers were able to perceive the vibes of their time and come up with a visual representation that mesmerized millions. Today, social media puts the role of Fashion Masterminds into perspective. Let’s embark on a time travel journey and try to understand how things were operating in the past, and what will be the future.
It’s been less than two centuries since designers rose to legendary prominence. Today they are viewed as visionaries, artists, leaders, magicians all wrapped in one. The emergence of Fashion Designers with celebrity like status can be dated back to the mid-19th century and is linked to British born designer Charles Frederik Worth who is also considered to be “the father of couture.” Worth quickly understood the importance of promotion and PR in a market where decisions were driven by desire for prestige. He revolutionized the shopping experience by turning the traditional stores into exotic bazaars, offering promotions and new designs every season. Simultaneously he carefully crafted his own reputation as an artist and visionary rather than a business owner or tailor.
Although the incredible success of the House of Worth ceased with the death of its creator in late 19th century, he left an important artistic and operational legacy. In a way he was the Henry Ford of the fashion industry bringing new management techniques into a well-established artisanal process. But most importantly he pioneered the image of the mystical designer who could look into the future and somehow anticipate what customers want.
The first few decades of the 20th century were a time of major cultural change with all the revealing signs of an upcoming fashion revolution. The launch of the feminist movements and the emergence of the middle class were central to the shift in trends. Women wanted a more relaxed look that supported their independence, influence and freedom from corsets and social limitations alike. The fashion relay was passed over to the marketing savvy and somewhat scandalous designer Paul Poiret and, one of the first renowned female designers, Madeleine Vionnet. Although they were prompting opposing aesthetics and color solutions, one thing they had in common was the revolutionary silhouette of the garments that completely eliminated petticoats and corsets. These two designer offered women the much needed liberty, each in his/her own way.
However, the iconic figure of the 20th century was undoubtedly Coco Chanel. Her creative and promotional genius had a multitude of dimensions. She challenged the most conventional trends by prioritizing comfort, taking the elegant simplicity to a whole new level and thus offering women a new source of understated confidence. She used her early experiences as seamstress and café performer as inspiration for designs that were practical, glamorous and exquisite all at once. The story of her personal life was so unique and symbiotic with her creation that she was basically fated to become an icon for generations. Chanel offered women a visual solution to their search of identity. But ultimately, the key of her success was down to the fact that she was a one woman show, who was performing for the right audience at the right time.
New designer names continued to emerge after Chanel, taking us on a roller-coaster of fashion moves and counter-moves. During the late ‘40s and ‘50s the post war market craved something more lavish and feminine. It was a perfect timing for Christian Dior to enter the fashion arena and bring back the bell like silhouette, albeit shorter in length with large fitted belts replacing painful corsets. The 60’s and the 70’s were a time of hippie movement, sexual revolution and a new boost in feminist trends thus becoming a solid ground for Yves Saint Laurent who created the bohemian, sensual and, on certain occasions, androgynous look.
Ultimately the success of the fashion designers was largely determined by their ability to sense the pulse of their time and find the right aesthetic equivalent. Their “greatness” can be determined by how well connected they are to the up and coming social “vibe” and how good they are at translating that vibe into a silhouette. That being said, wearing a Dior dress would look plain ridiculous in the ‘20s. Whereas Chanel would probably fail at promoting her vision a couple of decades earlier than she actually did, simply because nobody could relate. Who knows how many talented fashion designers lived in the “wrong” time for their creations and as a consequence never rose to prominence?
It’s true that many try to conquer the world of fashion and only a few succeed. Fashion is considered to be a risky business precisely because of its deemed unpredictability. In fact there is only one thing about fashion that is certain – it will keep on changing. Some of us are ready to engage in the lifelong sprint trying to catch up, others are playing it safe staying true to a certain style, and only a few visionaries (aka Fashion Masterminds) can see the future. The iconic masterminds of the past relied on their intuition, perception and sensibility. But will that always be the case? The question is: how is the mastermind changing in the light of the digital revolution and our new social context?
Let’s engage in a thought experiment and, for that purpose ask ourselves, what IS a Fashion Design? In essence it’s just a combination of proportion, cut and choice of textile (which also includes pattern). Any piece of clothing can be identified using these three parameters. Now let’s assume for a second that there is an infinite combination of these three dimensions. Say there is a huge mall that has all the possible combinations displayed on hangers (since there is an infinite number of combinations it’s technically impossible but let’s assume it is). And now let’s imagine that we allowed a statistically significantly number of people selected from all around the world to walk into the mall and pick ten pieces for free. What would they pick? Acting as rational decision makers they will pick something that is Socially Acceptable (people won’t be pointing fingers at them); something that Flatters their body shape and skin tone; something that is Practical or reasonably unconformable, and last but certainly not least they will try to pick something that is On Trend. It might be fairly easy to figure out the first three, but what about the last one? “Trends” are all about frequency. “Trends” would be the elements that appear more often between selections made by different people. But how did these people know that something is on trend? At first that might sound like a silly question, right? We saw that Vogue magazine the other day and we know that distressed denim is IN, off shoulder blouses are THE BIG thing this summer, etc.… we all know that SOMEHOW. But where lays the origin of the trend? Did participants end up choosing similar styles because they were exposed to “that” look all around the place and ended up accepting it? Or is it because “that” look is preferred by a lot of people at the same time?
Now, let’s further assume that we run the above experiment once a months, five years a row with the same exact diverse pool of people from all around the world. We will notice that the key “trends” keep changing along the time. We will also notice that there is a small group of people who “get” the trends a few months or maybe a full year before the trends can be labeled as such. Observed individually, at the time of their decision, those people might come across as a bunch of weirdos but as we go fast forward a few months we end up discovering that they were the true visionaries. Having that information readily available ahead of the time gives designers, gives brands and retailers time to align their design and merchandising with what the demand.
Our thought experiment might come across as farfetched but in reality we already have the universe of virtually “unlimited” options where different people are “picking” things every single day. The beauty of the digital era is that people are ready to share the likes for consumer good (particularly fashion) on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. All the data is readily available, can be extracted and mined in a variety of ways. But who is going to do that? Is the “new” Coco Chanel or new YSL secretly analyzing the data at 2am? Or is that going to be a geek in a hoodie working out of a Starbucks? Or could it be that the guy in the hoodie IS the Fashion Mastermind of our era?
Let’s think about it. The “Classic” Fashion Mastermind is engaged in two major phases of the creative process: (1) Perception – where moods and social vibes are being absorbed and “taken in” and (2) Creation – where conceptual ideas take shape and form. This is exactly what YSL and the likes did, and this is something that the guy in the hoodie absolutely cannot do. What he CAN do is skip the crystal ball phase of perception altogether and instead, connect to millions of customers all around the world, extract millions of photos shared and pinned on social media, process them using image recognition software, flag certain trends, track preference patterns along the time and forecast the future demand. Then he can send his research to data savvy fashion retailers and call it a day!
The guy in a hoodies has no fashion sense; he is not exactly self-sufficient and might need some creative guidance to test the right trend hypothesis. But in many ways he is much, much more powerful than the “Classic” Fashion Mastermind. His key power, by and large, lies in the current segmentation of the consumer market. People have never been so eager to express themselves though fashion as they are in the 21st century. Today we have wide variety of seemingly contradicting trends that are all somehow considered fashionable. Ultimately the demand for many different trends is becoming stronger. The supply side is also keeping up. The rise of Ecommerce allows smaller brands with limited resources target a tiny niche of the market and still make a good profit because the costs of brick and mortar stores are entirely eliminated. In other words the era of the Long Tail is taking over the world of fashion. Not only that, the tail is gradually getting thicker and longer, whereas the demand for mainstream fashion might or might not stay constant.
The true downside of “Classic” Masterminds is their need to be in “one” place at a time in order to have a good assessment of the environment. A “Classic” Mastermind cannot connect with and cater to many markets / market segments simultaneously. The guy in the hoodie on the other hand does not care about the geography or social vibes or demographics. All he needs is readily available data and patterns he can analyze. His output might not be a creative one, but, with the right pattern recognition algorithm, it will make the assortment of a fashion retailer or the collection of brand an absolute hit.
Today there are some incredible fashion tech startups analyzing patters. Celect helps large retailers’ asses their optimal merchandising strategy to minimize stock out and the share of inventory that goes on sale. Trendalytics, a super cool NY startup, takes a broader approach similar to the guy in the hoodie and is now analyzing fashion trends using information from the social media platforms. Things are slowly starting to change, fashion and big data might not be married just yet, but they are definitely engaged. Making “bets” in fashion might soon become a thing of the past, and this multi-billion dollar industry will (finally) open the door to big data analytics.
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