BA1 CLASS READING - INTRODUCTION TO FASHION THEORY - TRICKLE-DOWN/BUBBLE- (TRICKLE)-UP (JEANS) GROUP SEMINAR PRESENTATION (THE EASY ONE) - this reading is extracts (...) from the set text.

FASHION THEORY - TRICKLE-DOWN/BUBBLE- (TRICKLE)-UP

Trickle-down 

George Simmel's theory that the elites set the fashions that are copied by the lower classes or masses thereby producing a cycle of creation and innovation followed by imitation and modification. As a fashion ceases to be distinctive because of its dissemination to wider groups, the elite adopt new fashions to remain different. The cycle of fashion speeds up during periods of rapid social change as the elite seek to maintain their aloof status.


Trickle-up


The theory that reverses the trickle-down thesis and argues that more often, especially in recent decades, fashion impulses come from everyday subcultural, or street influences and are adopted by an influential set of fashion aspirants. Once new fads and fashions are popularised, they are appropriated by the mainstream fashion industry. While the street type embodies a badge of identity and difference, the designer version is oriented around stylishness and nowness. (Craik, 2009, p.338).


The trickle-down theory emerged with debates about the nature of class society. Initially associated with the spread of fashion from royalty to the aristocracy and middle classes, trickle-down theory came to epitomise the development of capitalist society. Fashion became a mechanism to display class difference through the adoption of new styles of dress that differentiated the elite from the mass. However, as new styles were  popularised and copied by the masses in a trickle-down process, the elite felt impelled to conjure up a new style that maintained their distinctiveness ...


... trickle-up theory ... In this reversal of the theory, it is argued that some fashions and sales originate among the non-elite or subcultures but are adopted by the elite. (Craik, 2009, pp.106-7).


See also


The Collective Behaviour Model of Fashion


In contrast to the top-down theory, Herbert Blumer argued that, rather than the elite setting fashion trends, fashion emerged from a collective desire to be 'in fashion' through the articulation of a sense of taste at a given moment and endorsement of certain styles and looks over others. In this way, a fashion emerges from the collective unconscious of a culture rather than beings imposed from above in a process of collective selection. (Craik, 2009, pp.107-8).

JEANS

Jeans seem to have originated in seventeenth-century Europe ... Jeans had two precursors. One was the pants made of denim, a cotton-wool blend manufactured in Nimes, in the south of France. The other was a fustian fabric of cotton, wool, and/or silk produced in Genoa, Italy, around the same time. The word 'denim' came from Nimes, while 'jeans' came from Genoa. The popularity of these trousers for French rural workers and Genovese sailors was exported to England with the expansion of pan-European trade.

Jeans travelled with migrants from Europe to America with New World expansion, since their practicality and durability suited the frontier lifestyle. With the mid-nineteenth-century and the expansion of the goldfields in California, jeans really came into their own. The figure usually credited with the rise of jeans is Levi Strauss (1829-1902), who started up a dry-goods supply house in the early 1850s. From the start, he retailed durable denim work pants. Around this time, the term 'jeans' shifted from a descriptor for the fabric to the name of the style of pants: jeans were born!

The difficulty of finding sufficiently robust jeans able to withstand the rigours of manual labour and strong sales of the lines of jeans carried by Strauss prompted him to manufacture his own brand beginning in 1873. The special quality he introduced was was copper rivets to reinforce the five pockets, a technique that was immediately adopted by the miners and soon copied by competitors ...

Levi Strauss added the leather tag bearing his name to the rear in 1886, created the signature 501 style in 1890, and added the red tab to the seat in 1936. These have remained key brand symbols ...

Although jeans were largely identified with male culture, women's involvement in the workforce in World War 11 saw the adoption of denim in their factory work clothes ...  Postwar, most respectable girls eschewed jeans for skirts or tailored trousers. Most American universities banned jeans on campus well into the 1960s and 1970s, especially for women.

Jeans, however, were adopted by artistic communities as a statement of an alternative lifestyle. Jack Kerouac's classic book 'On the Road' (1957) was reportedly responsible for selling a million pairs of jeans. The 1950s ushered in the most major transformation, as Hollywood heroes and emerging cult figures in popular music such as Robert Mitchum, Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Elvis Presley chose jeans and denim jackets. The three films most commonly associated with establishing the iconic status of jeans in popular youth culture were 'A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951). 'The Wild One' (1953), and 'Rebel without a Cause' (1955). As a result of these three films, a quasi uniform of jeans, T-shirts, and leather jackets became irrevocably associated with youth rebellion ...

By the 1960s, jeans were de rigeur for young people, who were now relabelled teenagers. This created its own moral panic as respectable manufacturers of jeans resented the connotations of delinquency that denim had acquired. They were selling more but, in their eyes, to the wrong people ...

Another phase of the jeans story was in the making. Increasingly, consumers were looking for more stylish jeans than the standard workingman's jeans, and the main brands (Levi Strauss, Lee, Wrangler, and Cooper) were being pushed to develop new denim looks that complemented new youth fashions. Innovations included bell-bottom legs; a variety of colours instead of the traditional indigo; and stone-washed, faded, marbled, torn, distressed, patched, and embroidered jeans. Most key designers, including Paris couturiers, began to include jeans within their ranges, often as a keynote or bestselling line that cross-subsidised their more esoteric ranges. (Craik and Peoples in Craik, 2011, pp.124-6).

KEY TERMS

None - this is an easy one!

KEY POINTS FOR DISCUSSION


1. The double heritage of the terms denim and jeans and the expansion of the term jeans to include not just the fabric but the garment. (Are there any other examples of this?) ...

2. The 501 red tag as a brand symbol. (What other examples are there of this?) ...

3. The adoption of trousers by women during World War 2 ...

4. The adoption of jeans by artistic communities and youth ... 

5. The development of style and fashion in jeans ...

REFERENCE

Craik, J. (2009) Fashion - the key concepts. Oxford: Berg.