Style changes: cyclical, inexorable, and foreseeable · were longest and shortest, widest and narrowest; when waists were lowest and highest, most pinched ... My reply is, in part,

121

Style changes:cyclical,inexorable,and foreseeable

Product planners take note:investigations indicate thatfashion follows a century-longeycle, regardless of economictrends, functional considerations,or technological innovations

Dwight E. Robinson

Picture an anthropologistsitting at a desk, thumbingthrough back issues ofmagazines like Vogue andHelper's Bazaar until hecomes to a model wearingthe latest style in eveningdress. He picks up hiscalipers, places one endon the model's mouthand the other at the tipof her toe, measures thisdistance, and records themodel's height. His nextstep is to measure andrecord six dimensions ofthe model's dress. Hethen figures the ratio ofeach of the six measure-ments to the model'sheight and puts tlie datain graphic form. Theresults show when skirtswere longest and shortest,widest and narrowest;when waists were lowestand highest, most pinchedand most expansive; andwhen necklines plungedlowest and rose highest,and hustlincs were mostample and most con-strained. Now, why onearth would a social scien-tist take on such a tediousand seemingly trivial task?The author suspects thatthe eminent anthropologistwho did just that recog-nized fashion change as

a subject worthy ofserious study. In fact,the author himself hasgone on to study changesin men's facial hair anddimensions of automobilesover the years. Takentogether, the results mayhave a message for theastute product planner: toplan products most effec-tively, managers shouldtry to discern the cyclethat the design of theirproducts goes through.

Dwight E. Robinson isprofessor of business,government, and society atthe Graduate School ofBusiness Administrationand School of BusinessAdministration, Universityof Washington. This is thethird article on fashiontheory and product designthat he has written forHBR. The heard data haveheen compiled for anupcoming article,"Fashions in Shavingand Trimming of theBeard: 1842-1972," whiehwill appear in theAn\erican lournal ofSociology in March 1976.

Illustrations courtesy ofThe Warner BrothersCompany.

Coping with fashion change has been a perennialprohlem for product planners. No matter how use-ful or durable a product may be, it cannot besuccessfully marketed unless its appearance (shape,color, texture) fits the potential huyer's present no-tion of what is styhsh. That notion, because it isconstantly changing, is a hard one to keep up with,especially for planners who rely on traditional fore-casting methods. It is often a matter of guessingwhat the puhlic will consider stylish when the publicitself does not know what forms will catch its fancyonly a year or two in the future.

To the businessman who is baffled or frustrated hythis prohlem of rapidly shifting tastes, I would saythat product planning does not have to be a guess-ing game. All of the fashion cycles that have beenmeasured are surprisingly regular and very long.Anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, who took time offfrom studying California Indian cultures to measurewomen's dress proportions over three centuries, veryappropriately referred to the "stateliness of theirmarch." ^

The question the product planner will ask is: Whatare the internal mechanisms that create what seemto be the most regular fluctuations in all of socio-economic statistics? My reply is, in part, thatwhere there is regularity of recurrence there arelikely grounds for prediction. Not perfect prediction,of course. No emerging social era has ever slavishlycopied an earlier one. Yet Victorian froufrou, bric-a-brac, and gingerbread had much in common witheighteenth-century rococo. What the fashion mea-surer can offer the product planner is an eye-open-

1. Krocber's study was published in Anihtopological Reconis 5, no. i (1940);pp. 111-153.

122 Harvard Business Review November-December 1973

ing body of information about recurring patterns,removing the blindfold imposed by too much atten-tion to economy, utility, function, and the like.

Evidence is at hand on which to base two principlesabout the way in which fashion works: (1) fashionsfollow an inexorahle cycle, and [2) because they areinexorable, fashion cycles must be as independentas any force to be found in social change. If, as is sooften argued, style change were simply the resultof external causes—events such as technological in-ventions, social upheavals, and historical accidents,or the advent of a design genius—it is clear that thegraphs I will present shortly would not display theregularity of movement that they do. To supposethat such a variety of events would convenientlysort themselves into these smooth undulations isa strain on helief.

What the dubious reader should consider at theoutset is that fashion change is sufficiently intel-ligible and predictable that its study and applicationto product planning can enormously reduce the riskof costly errors in judgment and may even con-tribute positively to successful new designs. Afterall, design must change if fashion so dictates. Ad-mittedly, progress in discovering the scientific lawsgoverning fashion has been slow. That seems to meunfortunate because I believe that patient effort canlead to valid conclusions about the way in whichthe process works. But at the least, I am confidentthat nobody who grasps the extent of the autonomyof the fashion process can ever look at the worldof design in quite the same way again. Ephemeralas the subject of fashion may now seem to he, I feelthat the potentialities for using it to improve prod-uct planning could easily amount to many billionsof dollars annually.

Dialectics of fashion

In their shortsighted obsession with their own era,people forget that fashion change is and has beenincessant, at least since civilization emerged fromthe dark ages. To prove this point for yourself, allyou need to do is review the history of any art, fineor applied. Has any period of painting, architecture,or literature repeated the style of its predecessor?Did the Jacoheans wear the same cut of clothes or

sit in the same sort of chairs as the Elizabethans? Ofcourse not.

Once stated, the law is obvious. Yet over and overagain, people think and act as though it didn't exist.At every moment we tend to think that the ultimatein design has somehow been reached. I've had auto-motive stylists tell me that they were not sure peo-ple would buy fewer cars if they shut up shop. Andmarket researchers have told me that at long lasttoday's generation has become so individualisticthat it has lost all interest in following fashion. Per-haps such confusion, if not self-deception, serves apurpose. If a young couple buying a new house wereto allow themselves to think ahout how old-fash-ioned it would look in io or 20 years, it would prob-ably spoil some of their fun in setting up house-keeping.

Yet fiuctuations in taste affecting all sorts of con-sumer goods are so regular that we now appear to heon the track of reliably forecasting them. Kroeber,for example, found that the ratio of women's heightsto the width of their skirts followed a remarkablypredictable cycle from 1823 through 1934.

The possibility of predicting fashion movements be-came even more real to me when I saw the resultsof my research on men's whiskers. My motivationfor doing such a study was, at first, sheer curiosity:I wanted to find out whether men are any less in-fluenced hy fashion than women. As a student ofeconomic cycles, however, I had developed the econ-omist's weakness for trying to find cyclical patternsin such familiar things as the national income,freight car loadings, and, of course, stock prices.After plotting how men changed their minds aboutwearing beards and moustaches over a period of 130years, I was amazed to discover that the results werestartlingly similar, indeed almost parallel, to Kroe-ber's figures on dress dimensions.

Exhihit I shows the similarity between the two timeseries. The time scales of the two curves have beenpositioned to allow for an assumed 21-year lead timein skirt fluctuations, possibly related to the compara-tive youthfulness of subjects in Kroeber's samplesfor dress. It is interesting to note that the coefficientof correlation for the two series is notably high,equaling 0.867. Exhibit II charts the occurrence since1842 of men with some form of facial hair. 1 oh-tained the data for these charts by counting thepictures of men shown in issues of The IllustratedLondon News from 1842, its first year of publica-tion, through 1972. The procedure was simply to

Style changes 123

Exhibit IFluctuations in skirt width (1823-1934) and beard frequency (1844-1955)

1823

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

10

1840 '50 '60 '70 '80 '90

^ ^ • H H Ratios of skin width to height of women's figuresi ^ B M H Percentage of men wearing beards 1844-1955

Note: The curves are based on five-year moving averages.

1900

1823-1934

•10 •20 '30 •40 '50 •60 •70

determine for any year the comparative frequenciesof five major features of facial barbering; sideburns,sideburns and moustache, moustache alone, beard,and no facial hair. Each comparative frequency wasthen expressed as a simple percentage, taken yearby year.

The hundred-year march: out and back

As were Kroeber's, my efforts at measurements arein the pioneering stage. My as well as Kroeber'schoices of categories for measurement may not havebeen the most appropriate ones in every case. Forinstance, as Exhibit U shows, my classification of"sideburns and moustaches" was never a form ofsignificant proportions. As can be observed, less than2O% of men ever chose to wear such a combination.In the classification "sideburns alone," only a down-swing took place during the period I plotted.

Nevertheless, the time series for beards, moustaches,and all forms of facial hair turned out to be impres-sive. The beard wave started almost coincidentallywith the first year of publication of The lUustnitcdLondon News and bottomed out around 1940. Thepopularity of the moustache began a vsharp rise about1870 and came close to rock bottom in 1970. Thesetwo waves, then, are both about as close to a centuryas one can imagine. But then we come to the mostimpressively regular wave. The wave of the numberof men wearing some form of whiskers shows halfof its rise between 1842 and 1885 and all of its de-cline from 1885 to 1970. If we allow 40 years forthe first half of its rise, then we start about 1800,for a full wave of 170 years. The average of thesefour cycles [excluding the sideburns and moustachesin combination} is 122.s years.

Kroeber, too, may have chosen one or two measure-ments that failed to yield impressive measurements.His figures on skirt length, for example, are of lim-

124 Harvard Business Review November-December 1975

Exhibit IIFrequencies of facial hair (1842-1972)

Sideburns

i

Sideburns and moustaches

Beards

Moustaches

n

%60

50

40

30

20

10

^ 0

o/

20

10

0

%

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

%

60

50

JO

Sum of frequencies of men with some form of facial hair %

100

JO

TO

JO

JO

JO

JO

1840'50 '60 70 "80 '90 1900 "10 20 '30 '40 '50 '60 '70

Note: The curves are based on five-year moving averages.

ited interest because before 1920 tbe bem seldomrose more than two or tbree inches from the floor.But wben Kroeber averaged tbe cycles of his six dressdimensions^ he got a mean wave length of 98 years.

The long; low look

Encouraged by tbe results of the facial hair study,I decided to measure fashion swings in anotherarticle of daily life—the automobile.

For this study, I expanded a study done in 1958 byL.H. Nagler, a consulting automotive engineer. Nag-ler had compiled statistics on the length and heightof Detroit-made automobiles from 1927 through1958. To obtain an industry average for eacb of tboseyears, he used the specifications of the standard sizePlymouth, Ford, and Chevrolet, since production ofthese three cars accounted for more than half ofthe market. To extend his study from 1959 through1974, I had to modify his procedures somewhat. Ini960, the standard-size Plymouth, Ford, and Chevro-let no longer claimed half of the market. To get anaverage figure that did reflect at least half of allDetroit production, I had to look at all the modelsin the three lines for which more than 100,000 wereproduced. I then weighed the figures aecording tothe number produced for each model before comingup with an overall average for each

Exhibit IU indicates that the ratio of tbe height tothe length of the average automobile is goingthrongh a cycle. True, the exhibit shows a progres-sion in only one direction, but this could be becausetbe mass-produced car has not been around longenough to have gone through a full style cycle. Thefigures do give some indication, however, that afterapproximately 50 years tbis particular fasbion trendtoward the long, low look is reversing itself as well.

Inch by inchThe car roof has steadily come down from a max-imum height of approximately 75 inches to aboutso incbes above tbe ground, or from nearly 6>2 feetto a little over 4 feet. Down, down, down came tbecar top, by balf an inch in tbe typical year. It istempting to speculate bow many billions of dollarsevery single inch of this mighty downward com-pression has cost. And no conceivable statisticalyardstick will ever tell us.

But do we really need to do more tban recognizetbe fantastically costly and intricate procedures thathad to be undertaken year in and year out to com-

Style changes 125

Exhibit IIIThe American automobile and the longer, lower look

Ratio of height to length

.55

.50

.45

Waryears

.35

.30

.25

.20

.15

.10

.05

0

1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975

press the mass-styled car? Not only did the car haveto be redesigned by means of drawings, clay models,and blueprints, but tools and dies of very hard, coldsteel had to be wrought to fine tolerances to stampout the parts of the new bodies. Currently, Detroit'sannual bill for these "special tools" is running up-wards of two billion dollars. And finally, every con-sideration had to be given to accommodating theoccupant—his frame, his vision, his position, hiscomfort. (Am I not right in putting comfort last? Ifthe auto designers also treat it as least important,they would have no apologies to make to designersof lots of things in other fields of fashion—fromcorsets to platform shoes, boiled shirts to neckties.)

It is as though fashion were a heavy hammer,pounding the car body ever flatter. Perhaps in thebeginning all the designer needed to do was lowerthe roof a few inches, sacrificing a httle headroom.But it soon became all too evident that, in order towage the campaign for the ever longer, lower look,car designers could not leave the mechanics of theautomobile to the engineers.

2. For lhe years 1917-19^8, L.H. Nagler, "Passenger Car Dimensions as Relatedtn Parking Requirements," a paper presented to the Highway ResearchBoiirU, Washinstoii, D .C, on January R, lysSi for the years 1959-1970,sources of statistics were March 15 issues of AutoirKHive Indmtriesi for theyeats i')7i-i974, sources were April 1 statistical issues uf Automoiivc News.

The back seat had to be moved forward from itsposition above the rear axle. The frame had to becurved downward like a cradle. It was not just amatter of scanting ground clearance, flattening thedesign of springs, and shifting the position of thedifferential. Soon the hody of the car had to comedown around the drive shaft itself; so in the mid-1930S the floor well was Introduced. Only an auto-motive engineer with a flair for history can fullygrasp the extent of the interrelated adjustments thatwere necessary to reposition the steering rod, theuniversal joint, the clutch case, and the gear case.Surely, all of these adjustments exerted effects onthe performance of the car, ranging from steeringcharacteristics to power delivery. Altered angles inthe drive mechanism meant realigning the motor;lowering the hood meant redesigning the motor. Sostepping up horsepower was not just a road to greaterspeed. It was necessary to propel the heavier cars.

Style of life

These findings point to a master force that, for wantof a better name, we can call the style of life. Thisforce, like Adam Smith's "invisihle hand," guides usto take up or abandon different ways of seeing our-

126 Harvard Business Review November-December 1975

selves. It moves remorselessly, in measured steps,from one polarity to another. A shift in one directionabsorbs all the energies we lavish on a "new look"for a period of approximately so years. This means,of course, a round trip of twice that time-usuallya century or more.

Thus, in cases like the automobile, we have justbarely had time enough to see the trend go morethan one way. Although the internal combustionengine was invented by 1886, the gasoline buggy re-mained a toy of the rich until after World War I.If my hypothesis about a century-long fashion cycleis correct, the long, low look has run its course [quiteaside from the consideration that going any fartherin that direction is very close to being anatomicallyimpractical). The profile of the family car from nowon will have a more vertical look to it, whatevermay he the fate of sports cars. In fact, reports com-ing out of Detroit tell us that the cars on the draw-ing boards are at least two feet shorter and some-what higher, and some of these are already on theroad. Moreover, if we look strictly at small cars,which are taking an increasing share of the U.S.market, we see that the ratio of their length toheight has already moved toward a more verticalemphasis.

What all of these trends refute is the notion thatfashion behavior is random and whimsical. True,the evidence is based on only three forms subject tofashion shifts, but they are things that confrontmost of us most of the time. When my data onbeards are observed in conjunction with Kroeber'son skirt widths, the similarities of periodicity andamplitude seem little short of astounding. And Ex-hibit III on diminishing car height shows a remark-able similarity to the downswing on the moustachecurve in Exhibit II: both moved downward at therate of 2% per year [if the one-directional move-ment is given the value of 100%). By all means letus have more measurements, but for now the fewthat we have are precious.

Style scarcity or oil shortage?

At this point the reader may be getting a little im-patient with all this talk about fashion's influencewhen it's obvious that the gasoline shortage hascaused Detroit to rethink its design policies. The

very long car has become a kind of dinosaur, facedwith extinction because of problems with its foodsupply.

I cannot argue that the gasoline supply situation hashad no effect on the kinds and sizes of cars thepublic is buying. I can say, though, that if therewere no gasoline shortage, standard cars would stillbe getting shorter and higher because a fashiontrend has reached its extreme and must change di-rection.

This brings me to my second main point—namely,that fashion cycles display a regulanty that putsthem effectively outside the influence of externalevents. These events, however, can always be givenas excuses. World War I had no discernible effect onthe skirt width cycle. Neither did that war disruptthe mode of shaving popular among men.

Once a new fashion trend is set in motion, thereis little—whether it be technological innovation,political edict, functional change, even basic eco-nomics—that can be done to stop it or change itscourse. Therefore, specialists in these fields are oflimited use to style policy.

Impact—or lack of it—of the safety razor

If technological innovations did influence the move-ment of fashion, then we should certainly find evi-dence of that influence on sideburns, beards, andmoustaches. The trend toward removing all facialhair began around 1885 and grew steadily until 1970.So one might suppose that King C. Gillette's intro-duction of the safety razor, which simplified the taskof shaving, would have accelerated the trend towardbeardlessness. Yet the data do not bear out such anexpectation.

Gillette's safety razor appeared on the market in1903; by 1905 sales records show that the public wasresponding to this innovation with some enthusi-asm; by 1917 razor sales had risen to more than onemillion a year and continued to soar, so that byi960 the company had sold an accumulated world-wide total of almost a half billion razors. But myface counts suggest that other factors were at workin influencing what men did with their whiskers.

The safety razor may well have given a final rein-forcement to the clean-shaven style. But by 1905beardlessness had been on the rise for more than

Style changes 127

20 years, and, even more significantly, its rate ofadvance was nearly as marked before Gillette beganto make his fortune as after.

The foiled central planners

Central planners have fared no better than tech-nological innovators. As Professor Marshall I. Gold-man, prominent Sovietologist, has shown, even theRussian consumer refuses to buy clothing and otherarticles of daily life that a state-controlled consumergoods industry turns out, if the industry disregardsthe negative impact of monotonously repetitious andunimaginative design.^ In fact, consumer resistancehas led to excess inventories of headache propor-

enough orders for suede skirts to run a privatelyowned leather factory for two years until the author-ities caught up with him. He ingeniously took overa handbag-producing factory, got shipments of hard-to-procure suede from places up to a thousand milesaway, hired a brigade of tailors, and paid theirwages, even though they were not registered asworkers at the factory. "Uncle Grisha" is now afugitive, perhaps fleeing straight for the New Yorkgarment district—where his initiative and enterprisewould he looked on more favorably.

Dr. Goldman concludes: "Doubtless with time andno war the Russians will have tbeir industrializa-tion and their fashion. Nonetheless, hefore bothgoals are attained, the centrally planned economy of

1896 1900 1903

tions for Soviet central planners. So it happened that"to promote variety in fashion and reduce the size ofunwanted inventories, considerable administrativedecentralization has been found necessary in themanufacture of certain consumer goods." "̂

Fashion cannot breathe in the absence of free choice.Recent newspaper accounts show that the demandsof the Russian consumer are promoting actionseven more uncharacteristic than decentralization. Aman known as "Uncle Grisha" apparently had

3. "frum Sputniks to I'.iiitics," Business Histoiy Review, Spring-Summer1963, p. 81.

4. Ibid., p. 88.

5. IbiJ,, p. 9^.

tbe Soviet Union may have to submit to somerevolutionary changes." ''

Fashion and function

But surely function plays some part, you say. Ac-tually, in the consumer's lust for design change,utility or functional qualifications play the sub-ordinate role. That tbis point is not self-evident islargely due to the fact tbat performance improve-ments provide pretexts to dress up the appeal ofdesign changes. Of course, a dress must cover and acar must move [more or less, in either instance), butcovering and movement are not what people buy.

128 Harvard Business Review November-December 1975

The wraparound windshield, first introduced inL954, is an illustration of this principle. It was bailedas a triumph of engineering technology directedtoward improving the driver's visual field. I arguedjust a few years after its introduction that the wrap-around had been introduced not so much to im-prove the driver's field of vision as to stimulate theeye of the beholder. I got some flak about this fromautomobile people as well as friends. It was onlyafter a year or two of patient sleuthing that I wasable to confirm my suspicion. In the course of aninterview with a great automobile stylist, he assuredme that the wraparound windshield design hadencountered every sort of resistance from the en-gineers. After recounting in almost gory detail theefforts of those who put the windshield across in the

through the acquisition and possession of things thatare comparatively scarce—and, therefore, so muchthe harder to get.

Fashion creates that scarcity by discarding old forms.But gearing up production for newly styled articlestakes time and money. The number of durable goodsproduced for any purpose in the past will obviouslygreatly exceed those that can be produced in anyrecent period of time. The recent, then, is scarce,compared with the total stock. But there would beno practicable way of distinguishing the recent fromthe old design unless the design of new productswere continually altered in a recognizable way. Thusthe everchanging consensus of fashionable taste ful-fills an all-too-human need.

1909 1910

face of such die-hard resistance, the designer thoughta moment and added, "You know, visually it wasn'tso bad."

Some unfashionable notions about fashion

If function, political edicts, technological innova-tions, or even economy cannot explain the fashioncycle, then what does? I believe that the explana-tion lies in the fact that fashion is a behavioralphenomenon, probably growing out of status com-petition. In jockeying for positions of higher socialstatus, people seek to demonstrate the extent of theirpurchasing power. One way that they do this is

Imperious consumerThe consumer's restless search for scarcity or noveltywould seem to contradict the popular notion thatfashion change is forced on the consumer by theproducer. But isn't it, rather, the consumer whodemands innovation in design from the producers?What is more, it seems to be a small group of in-novative consumers that plays a significant role inand provides stimulus to the entire economy.

This small group (invariably regarded as eccentric)conceives and nurtures the nascent style at least aquarter of a century before it comes to be consideredeven slightly acceptable by either the establishmentor the general public. The discerning designer picks

Style changes 129

up on what this avant-garde bas been doing andselects a style that he or she thinks the general buy-ing public is ready to accept. This is not easy; thetrue influencers are by no means always just thosewith the fattest pocketbooks. Then, if the style isright for the time, it is adopted by a fashion elite andeventually filters down to the mass consumptionlevel.

To ascertain tbat the consumer is no sitting duck instyle innovation, you have only to read the historiesof taste to find that great connoisseurs were as in-strumental in changing styles as producers, andevidently took precedence over the latter. Evenwhere the consumer "arbiter of taste" is faced witha single seller of a product, he can simply abandon

often change the orhit of the taste of a whole epoch. . . in the world of fashion, be it clothes, interiordecoration, or flowers, tbey continually assert freshvalues. Madame Eugenia Errazuriz [1859-1951] wassuch an influence." "

fosiah Wedgwood, whose career as a manufacturerof pottery led to his becoming the richest self-mademan in England in the late eighteenth century, saidnearly the same thing: "Fashion is infinitely superiorto merit in many respects; and it is plain from athousand instances that if you have a favorite childyou wish the pubUc to fondle and take notice of youhave only to make choice of proper sponsors." ^What I discovered about Josiah (and I am sure thesame is true of any entrepreneur in the realm of

J913 1917 1919

tbe product—and has done just that, as the Sovietcentral planners can attest.

Quiet leadersCecil Beaton, a noted photographer, critic, and stagecostume designer, once wrote: "Someday, perhaps, avolume will be written about the quiet, authoritativepeople who, without attracting attention to them-selves like noisy comets, yet, by the sheer, gravita-tional pull of their individual choice, influence and

6. Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doublcday, 1954!,p. 100.

7. Eliza Metyard, The Life, of Josiab Wedgwood, vol. 2 [Londonr Hursi andBl.iukeit, 1866), k'tter to Bentlcy, July 19, 1779, p. 378.

8. Beaion, The Glass of Fashion, p. aoo.

highly styled goods) was his complete dependenceon the example of the great connoisseurs of his dayas the arbiters of his design policy-people like SirWilliam Hamilton, Lord Townley, and the Duchessof Portland.

Still, I am tempted to put forward Mme. Errazurizas my shining example. Beaton, who has no ax togrind, points her out: "Her effect on the taste of thelast fifty years has been so enormous that the wholeaesthetic of modern interior decoration .. . can belaid at her remarkable doorstep . . . , " including thefirst use of white walls.'̂ Instrumental in launchingboth Picasso and Balenciaga on their paths to fame,this woman was one of that small number of great,

130 Harvard Business Review November-December 1975

innovative consumers to whom others look for adefinition of their own tastes. The work of such aconsumer is, as Beaton says, like that of an artist,"selecting and giving meaning to the things thatmake up the daily tenor of existence." '"̂

Recommendations to theproduct planner

In making recommendations—that is, making fash-ion analysis applicable to the product planner-whatis needed is not so much a neat list of do's and don'tsas a few general pointers.

"Upstairs, Downstairs" should speak volumes totastewatchers in all walks of life—and to those inmerchandizing.

Harley J. Earl, tbe great GM stylist |who workedthere from 1926 to 1963), stressed this point in aletter to me of October 23, 1963:

"For the last ten years I have been on the Federal In-ternational Automobile Contest Committee for theUnited States, and I am also serving as NationalCommissioner of NASCAR, the National Stock CarRacing Association. You may think this peculiar,but I have always felt it allowed me to be in contactwith the people wbo really live automobiles andeverything I got from them was spontaneous andnot channeled."

Taste watchers

First of all, since the coming taste will be at com-plete variance with the current one, the long-rangeplanner should train his or her eye to select fromamong all the minority forms of exhibition of tastethose that seem most outrageous to the conven-tional taste. This may sound a little like brainstorm-ing. But as a most flagrant illustration, look at theVW Beetle when it was introduced around 1950.Nothing could bave been more at variance witb thesolid-gold Cadillac, the American dream car at thetime. Nonetheless, as soon as a mere one or twothousand reasonably well-balanced Americans hadbought the Beetle, the prognosticator sbould havetaken it seriously as a harbinger of a popular newstyle of car.

No planner, short- or long-term, should concentratehis attention on what producers and their profes-sional engineers are doing to the exclusion of whatamateurs [collectors, hobbyists, sports enthusiasts,and buflfs) are doing. Hobby magazines, for onething, are treasuries of information, and are usuallyaccurate because their readers demand accuracy. Forexample, such journals pick up on antique crazesfor period styles of a variety of articles, whether theyare clothes, furniture, or cars. It is sociologically un-thinkable that if millions of people are opting forEdwardian men's suits and women's dresses. Tiffanyglass or Art Deco, or Duesenbergs and Bugattis, suchassociations arc not going to have some effect onwhat people are looking for in new products (interms of shape, texture, ornamentation, and all therest). The runaway success of the British Broadcast-ing Company's Masterpiece Theatre television series

Earl's comment not only bolsters the case for payingattention to hobbyists, but it should also reinforcemy earlier point that the producer cannot dictatefashion terms to the consumer. It may seem a longway from the pit stop to the rarefied strata in whichMme. Errazuriz worked her magiC; but if we con-sider the race car driver and the Chilean woman asdiverse examples of consumers, then we may be ableto see who really decides what style will be popularat what time.

Sic transit

Equally important, the product planner should keepin mind that while some successful designs are sopersistent that they seem almost immortal, theynever are. I have already talked about the auto-mobile's long, low look as being merely a passingfashion. All too frequently top professional designerstbemselves are quite blind to the transitory natureof the most impressive of design directions.

I remember a comment that was made several yearsago when I visited the styling division of one of themajor automobile companies. The man who wastben the company's top designer said to me with allthe tact he could muster: "Surely, you aren't goingso far as to claim that the long, low look is anythingless than the ultimate standard in automohile de-sign?" When I answered that indeed I was going thatfar, adding that we should even be prepared for areturn of the upright look, he and his associateslooked at me with tolerant incredulity.

9 Ibiil., p. 215.

Style changes 131

Steady progressions

Finally, the product planner should, above all, makehimself familiar with the fashion cycle for his par-ticular product. He may not find the century-longspan aixiut which I have spoken, but he will find adefinite pattern bounded by extremes. If a plannerknows where in the cycle his current design is, hecan fit design to changes in consumer taste. Thisholds true for both the long- and short-rangeplanner.

Perhaps the short-range planner may ask what use a50-year design shift is to him. But, after all, a 50-yearchange amounts to an average yearly adjustment of2%. Once a product cycle is plotted, the plannershould be able to see at what yearly rate the designmoves toward its extreme limits. For the productssurveyed in this article, the annual rates of progres-sion varied from a low of about 1.5% to a high of3%. I suspect that most products' yearly rates ofdesign change fall within this range. On this hasisthe product planner siiould have a sporting chanceof deciding what the buyer will want next year orten years from now.

However, most of my observations about the scien-tific possibilities for design planning are offered topeople outside of fashion's traditional home—wom-en's dress. It would be presumptuous for me to tryto tell Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, or their humblercompetitors that they should be mindful of suchobvious things as the "trickle-down" phenomenon.The garment industry has learned this lesson so wellthat it's second nature. Yves St. Laurent may seekinspiration from the street, but the proprietor of AuPair Apparel, Inc., occupying the twentieth floor of820 Seventh Avenue, can't see down that far. If helooks down too often, he is likely to jump.

What I am arguing, finally, is that fashion, in itsremorseless march from one polarity to the next, isnot ail that unpredictable. Its predictability, even ifit is not exact, should prevent planners from stand-ing pat and should help them prepare for any newtwists of the consumer's fancy.

The quest for civilization

Everything we see done aiiaround us is a response toman's need to transcendnature in the raw. Itrequires no apology, onlyunderstanding. In a worldwhere so many substan-tive things are eithercommonplace or standard-ized, it makes no senseto refer to the rest asfalse, fraudulent, frivo-lous, or immaterial. Theworld works accordingto the aspirations andneeds of its actors, notaccording to the areane,ordained, or moralizinglogic of people who pinefor another age—an agewhich, in any case, seemsdifferent from today'slargely because of thefact that its observerswere then children. Inthe world of adults, theseller has no choiee hut totry to understand theproblems and aspirationsof the actors to whom hedirects his efforts, andthen try to find ways tohook onto these for hiscommercial advantage.Both sides will generallybenefit from the effort. Theheightening of expecta-tions and the embellish-ment of life that are theintentions of church

architecture and the poetryof T.S. Eliot arc no moreworthy for the sensibilitiesto which they appeal thanthe appeal to the senseswe observe in ElliotNoyes's design of com-puters and lipstick con-tainers or WiiiiamBernbnch's composition oflithesome advertising copy.In hoth cases the "product"is what people feel withtiieir senses, not just sterileobjects like granite, paint,steel, copper wire, andletters on a page. Inboth eases the artisan andthe poet each correctlyassumes that his audiencerequires more than sterilefunctionality—that peopleare trying to solve theproblems of life and livingat levels that transcendpure primitive function-ality.

FiotnThe Maikeang Mode, copyright11)69 by Theodore Levitt; re-priated with lhe permission iifMcGraw-Hill Book Corapany;pages 144-14 S-

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