If you think about it, people are given freedom of choice, especially when it comes to fashion. But having this freedom of individual choice does not mean that you are not influenced by society.
Fashion implies that regardless of the norm or trend, regardless of what your budget is or where you live, you follow it. This is most obvious with a simple example – the biggest influx of shoppers in stores occurs precisely after publications in magazines describing some new trends. It’s hard to know if this is just a coincidence with the beginning of a new season or a special marketing move, but it’s more likely the second.
Because even those people who try not to succumb to trends and consider their style unique, in some way follow their own fashion – because they still adhere to certain rules in clothing and style, by which, which is exactly what distinguishes them from the general mass, the average person will not dress. Even if you, as a person, claim to avoid trends, you have to admit that the fact that people around you who follow fashion look more aesthetically pleasing in the general crowd still influences your buying decisions.
If you initially think about trends as a management tool, in principle, the concept is very clear. Companies set trends that will pay off for them quickly and best – for example, start promoting the popularity of T-shirts from cheaper fabric, or put your brand on every trendy thing, so that passersby who saw a stylishly dressed person, immediately understood where to get these clothes. With the help of trends to control people is very easy – and most easily the youth and teens. No matter how stereotypical it may sound, teenagers and young people are most often led by the tricks of marketers, in order to comply with their peers, and not to look like a “black sheep”.
Money-hungry companies are focused on them – they produce expensive clothes, setting the trend. Unfortunately, this focus of young people on following trends can be a way of self-expression, but it can also prevent a person from becoming an individual personality.
The question of self-expression is quite complex. It is commonly believed that if a person has an identity, then he is in some way more interesting and more established as a person than others. But is this true?
In fact, any trend, any style, any individuality is now a hodgepodge of what was already there once. Humanity has too long a history to be given the opportunity to come up with something completely new after all these years. A person’s individual style has always, at the very least, been inspired by someone else’s already existing image or past trends. One element is from the style of some star in the noughties, another is taken from the current trend – and together you get a new image. That is, to say that such a person is completely individual would be slightly wrong, but it does not negate the fact that he satisfies his need for self-expression. Therefore, the question of whether trends are a way of self-expression can be answered with a firm “yes” – they quite significantly help a person to find his own individual style.
In conclusion, we can conclude that trends are both a way of self-expression and a management tool. Also it should be noted that these two concepts are interconnected – people’s need to express themselves leads to the ability of companies to manage them, and vice versa, the ability of companies to manage people leads to this need. It is a vicious circle – but it is difficult to argue with the fact that, nevertheless, management plays a much greater role in trend-setting. Satisfying the need for self-expression doesn’t compare to the profits companies make from people reaching for newfangled clothes and other products. But, in fact, this is not something extremely bad – fashion has existed for most of human history, and the concept is unlikely to disappear even in the next couple thousand years. Most people choose to follow trends in order to earn a good reputation and credibility in some collective. To do it or not is a personal decision of each person, but no matter how much it is, this decision may even affect a person’s position in society.
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