Who runs fashion and what are the goals of the consumer society?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If you look around, you can see that many people, to varying degrees, try to follow the current fashion trends.

From the sociological studies published in the press, one can find out that more than a third of the population of Russia is interested in and tries to follow fashion. Sociologists have determined that about 39% of Russians are interested in fashion trends.

Of these, 18% say they dress according to the latest fashion trends.

What makes people, often contrary to common sense, do one thing and not do another? What is the mechanism for introducing various trends into society through fashion? Who runs fashion and what are the goals of the consumer society, we will analyze in this article.

Fashion supporters are mainly women and young people, but among them there are also men and representatives of the older generation.

According to fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev, Russians follow fashion more than Europeans.

"In France, no more than 7% of the population follows fashion, which means that fashion in Russia is in great demand."

- said Vasiliev.

The question arises, what is "Fashion", after which a huge part of the population of our planet is chasing and ready to do much for it? There are many definitions of the word "fashion", here are some of them:

• Fashion is a set of tastes and attitudes that dominate in a certain social environment at a certain, usually short time.
• Fashion is the temporary dominance of a particular style.
• Fashion is a short-term dominance of a certain taste in any area of life. In a narrow sense, it is a change in forms and patterns of clothing.
• Fashion is a fragile, fast-passing popularity.
• Fashion can determine the type or form of clothing and accessories, a set of ideas, principles of human behavior, social habits and etiquette.

Based on the foregoing, we can make a generalized definition of fashion something like this:

Fashion is an array of information that contains certain images, algorithms of behavior and thinking. Fashion is a way of sustainable dissemination of information in society.

Fashion is in the style of clothing, lifestyle, entertainment, styles of arts, literature, architecture, cuisine, and so on, which are popular in a given society and at a certain period of time.

An important characteristic of fashion is the desire to follow the new.

The principle of novelty and fashionableness depends not so much on the objective time of the creation of the object, as on the moment of its entry into the system of selected values and glorification, recognition in society.

Everyone knows the famous expression of Bernard Shaw:

"Fashion is a controlled epidemic."

Real life shows us that Bernard Shaw was absolutely right.

A bit of history

The history of fashion is rooted in tradition.

Tradition is also a certain array of information, like fashion, only there is no element of novelty in it.

People at all times wore clothes of certain styles, colors, decorated with patterns, which both in the past and today have expressed and express their cultural and subcultural affiliation. Previously, people danced traditional dances, performed traditional rituals of meetings, farewells, burials, weddings, etc.

The first signs of fashion emerged as a means of dividing into social strata. The separated part of society, which ranked itself among the "high society" could financially afford some excesses. Therefore, to separate themselves from the rest of the "crowd", they wore different clothes, had different manners, and so on.

Thus, various outfits, etiquette, manners, habits, some rituals (tea drinking, visiting theaters, decorations, etc.) came into fashion, which not only separated the “elite” from the crowd, but also stratified it into even smaller sublayers.

The heyday of fashion was in the Middle Ages. The Crusaders brought information from the Levant to Western Europe about the exquisite fabrics and silk there. In Northern Europe, silk was imported and was considered a great luxury. Wealthy people could afford brocade from Italy and other expensive items.

With the advent of machine production, inexpensive clothing became available to the general public. At the same time, fashion in the style of clothing appeared, as a global phenomenon, this happened in France in the 17th century. Throughout history, different countries have been the source of newfangled clothing trends. At the moment, Paris is considered the most "fashionable" city, but previously Italy, Spain, and England set the fashion.

Let us recall that fashion is information, and the speed of its circulation has always directly depended on the prevailing technologies of its time. With the development of trade, a synthesis of cultures took place, and through people who moved and came into contact with each other, information exchange also increased.

And with the development of information technologies, we all plunged into the information array of a planetary scale, the speed of information circulation has increased, the ability to influence the mass statistics of human behavior through fashion has gained tremendous power.

Influence of fashion on thoughts

If you look at a person as a representative of the species “Homo sapiens”, then you can see the presence of algorithms of herd-flocking behavior in the psyche. And, from this point of view, you can consider the root causes why people react to fashion. For survival in a flock / herd, two main forms of behavior can be distinguished:

1. it is either to stand out and become a leader,
2. or become like everyone else, not allowing you to be ranked among the outcasts.

Fashion allows you to do both at the informational level. Hence the desire of a certain part of society to immediately join the "latest trends". This is especially noticeable in the representatives of the "stars" of show business, various media persons. Thus, they try to consolidate their position as leaders, followed by a mindless crowd.

Another part of the townsfolk does not immediately engage in the process of updating their style by following the fashion, but later, when most of those around them have transformed following the new trends, they also follow them, because none of them wants to be a “black sheep”.

Unfortunately, many are trying to assert themselves not with the help of their mind, actions, good deeds, but use external attributes for this: clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, piercings and the like. In other words, all these external attributes, if they stand at the head of the corner, in their essence, are nothing more than an attempt to fill the inner emptiness and dissatisfaction of a person with himself.

We think such people believe that this will help them overcome some shortcomings and complexes. For example, the inability to get to know a girl forces guys to dress according to the latest fashion, as if making an application to rank themselves among the leaders of the "pack", tattoos give a "brutal look", making the guy look "cooler", demeanor allows them to be ranked among some subcultures, from "rappers" to "gopniks". However, these techniques only mask, hide flaws, without correcting them.

Examples of "fashion" influence

The fact that fashion influences people, forcing (often bypassing consciousness) to do one thing and not do another, was noticed long ago. With the modern development of information technology, social engineering technologies at this stage of the globalization process, it would be strange if fashion were not used as a tool to achieve certain goals.

Consider some of the trends that can be traced if we look at world culture with an understanding of the technologies of targeted impact on the psyche of people.

For example, emancipation began following the fashion for women's clothing, which was previously considered purely masculine. Women, struggling with some types of social dependence, eventually acquired not freedom, but a new owner.

Signature: Coco Chanel was the first to adapt men's trousers for women

Clothes that stick out "feminine charms", coupled with other technologies, helped to introduce the cult of the naked body into society. And this, in turn, stimulated through sexual instincts a change in life values and ideals. Sex, rather than starting a family, became the goal of most acquaintances, and sometimes even began to be equated with Love. Hence the fall in morality.

Now you can observe the introduction of such a phenomenon as fagotreating. Many consider this word not literary, because more "decent" analogs have been invented for it, but we prefer to call everything by its proper names. There are a lot of tools involved here, but we'll look at the influence of fashion.

Pidorasing is unacceptable for the majority, because it is contrary to human nature, and it will not be possible to quickly implement it, so the process goes in small, "imperceptible" steps. By the way, we described some part of this process in one of our works: Humor as a tool for managing society

Skinny pants for boys are in fashion now, by analogy with the same things for women (the boundaries of gender are being erased). In fashion (it turns out that fashion is not only clothes, but also manners, stable verbal expressions), a new type of male greeting: now men kiss when they meet, which various media persons actively demonstrate to us from TV screens.

And their cutesy kisses differ from the threefold kiss, traditional in Russia, as a usual way of expressing affection for a guest (a guest kiss is a special kiss, filled with great meaning, since a guest in Ancient Russia is a messenger of fate that can both improve and worsen the life of the hosts).

“Success” in “out of the ordinary” ways of self-expression is in vogue, and there is a sustained tendency to award various prizes of any “Eurovision” exclusively to gay people. Men's hairstyles, which were recently considered exclusively feminine, are in fashion, pink in men's clothing, jewelry, hair coloring, eyebrow tattooing. There are even men's thongs!

All this together works on the Overton window technology, slowly breaking stereotypes and shifting the phenomenon from the category of “unacceptable” first to the category of “acceptable”, and then, after several such shifts, fagotracing can become the norm in society.

There are many different opinions on the Internet on the growing fashion for tattoos, we will express our opinion. We agree with the statement that the historical ancestor of the tattoo is the stigma. Then the phenomenon was transformed, and one of the last properties is belonging to a certain subculture (for example, prison).

What is the "trick" here? Any subculture has its own attributes (labels): ideals, values, behavior algorithms, etc. The one who got the tattoo unconsciously "connected" himself to this subculture, and the algorithms inherent in the subculture and tattoo symbols will now to some extent be manifested in his behavior. So much for social engineering in action.

And what and what phenomena are removed from our life with the help of fashion? Chastity, modesty, naturalness in women. Masculinity, detachment from external attributes in men.

In order for the reader to have a more complete understanding of control with the help of fashion, we advise in addition to read one of our works, where we analyzed the Full Control Function (PFC) using examples, where fashion was understood as one of the examples: Full control function in life, or how to recognize someone else's control

The reader should not get the impression that fashion is unconditionally bad. Fashion is just a tool, with its help you can promote not only the bad. What positive is becoming fashionable these days? Fashion for a healthy lifestyle, for sobriety, for healthy teeth, for relief muscles.

The fashion for one-story construction, for beautiful repairs in the house, for structurally convenient windows (preferably wooden, but using the technology of double-glazed windows). For healthy, adequate nutrition, for herbal treatment, other non-drug means. There is much more to be said. And even if these phenomena are not as popular as others, but nevertheless the fashion for this is present and affects social processes.

Control mechanism through fashion

The basis for a system to function is two factors.

• Algorithms of herd-schooling behavior (we have already mentioned it). They are inherent in human nature and allow society to survive in the early stages of evolution. People strive either to become leaders (leaders), or to become "like everyone else", not to stand out, so as not to become outcasts.
• The second factor is the property of the "crowd" to be guided in everything by "authority".

Thus, there is a structureless management of society, when no one is forced to follow fashion, but people "themselves" do as the fashion prescribes.

How does something become fashionable? There are two ways.

The born idea is picked up by people because it is in harmony with their ideas about life, with their ideals and values. And with the development of communications, ideas spread quickly, and if they "fell on the soul" of a certain number of people, then they become fashionable.

The second way is based on knowledge of management processes and building the global fashion industry. We think everyone understands that fashion does not affect individual countries and peoples, it is global. It is clear that there are some local fashion trends, but in general fashion has an impact on all of humanity. Accordingly, fashion is controlled by those people who control global processes on Earth. Let's call them "the world behind the scenes".

Let's consider the process of management on the example of fashion for clothes. How many fashion designers graduate in educational institutions annually? We think thousands. Do they all know how to design clothes? Yes. Are there many among them who can do it talentedly? We think that although this is a small percentage of the total, it is still many, many hundreds.

And how many fashion houses and couturiers are there in the world who determine all the world's clothing trends? There are only a few of them. And these few "trendsetters" of fashion are selected for this role if they meet certain parameters, including moral ones. Plans are always made for management purposes.

And there are also plans for managing global social processes. If the designer's creations fit into the trends defined by the "world behind the scenes", then such a person receives support (financial, informational, etc.). In the future, he only has to catch these tendencies and stay in line with them. A few couturiers do an excellent job with their task, therefore, they are irreplaceable in their places.

Shown to the whole world, new collections are first picked up by various media persons who play the role of leaders or authorities. Then, numerous enterprises, having adapted for the mass buyer, produce clothes for the general population and the crowd, following fashion trends, picks up and promotes their goals. This is how various phenomena appear in society, as it were, "out of nowhere," "by themselves," but no one can "untwist" the ball to the subject from which the introduction of this or that phenomenon into life began.

If we continue talking about fashion for clothes, then the question arises: why is it updated so often? We believe that the frequent change of styles and collections, firstly, does not allow both those who dictate fashion and those who follow it to relax. Thus, a person's attention is switched to the constant observance of the imposed rules in an accelerated mode, and the very process of management, in which fashion acts only as a tool, falls out of his visibility zone.

And secondly, it forces people to change their wardrobe long before wear and tear. This forms a consumer society. In order for people to have the opportunity to change things often, industry is forced to work - from cotton producers to power engineers. And people themselves are forced to work harder in order to have the funds to buy new clothes.

Why is it necessary for the "world behind the scenes"? Fashion for clothes solves the issue of universal employment, this is by no means an unimportant issue, because people are forced to devote most of their daylight hours to work, while there is practically no time left for their own development. In the attached video, Artyom Voitenkov perfectly revealed the mechanism of the fashion, however, in our opinion, he indicated the wrong goals.

If people have free time, they will spend it, among other things, looking for answers to fundamental questions: about the meaning of life, about a bright future. Sooner or later they will figure out why we do not live as it seems ideally, but otherwise. And then the "world behind the scenes" will lose control, and they do not need this.

They preferred to create a consumer society, for the maintenance of which the resources of the planet are grinded and mountains of garbage are created. But it cannot go on like this all the time. We will either exhaust fossil resources and fill up the Earth with garbage and die, or we will change our way of life and live in harmony with Nature.

Conclusion

What should fashion look like in a society of Humans (with a capital letter) and how to go to this state? First of all, it is necessary to understand in wide layers of society that fashion is an instrument of unstructured management, which has ultimate goals. These goals need to be able to identify and then compare with your goals. And if they differ, then you need to go towards your goals, even contrary to the behavior of the majority.

A person can stand out by his actions, by his creations, and not by some external attributes. Clothes should not only be comfortable, beautiful and clean, but also harmoniously correlate with the laws of the very nature of Man.

Habits should help us stay healthy and beautiful, hobbies should lead us to development. Only in this way a bright future awaits us and our descendants. We have everything to make it a reality.