Fashion, Novelty and Optimality: An application from Physics

TL;DR

This paper models the fashion market using physics-inspired concepts, showing how local imitation and social structures influence the rise and fall of fashion outlets and strategies for new producers.

Contribution

It introduces a physics-based model of fashion dynamics incorporating local imitation and social hierarchies, highlighting strategies to mitigate counterfeits and dominate markets.

Findings

Local imitation drives fashion trends and outlet dominance.

Counterfeits reinforce simple imitation strategies.

Social leaders help avoid counterfeit influence.

Abstract

We apply a physical based model to describe the clothes fashion market. Every time a new outlet appears on the market, it can invade the market under certain specific conditions. Hence, the "old'' outlet can be completely dominated and disappears. Each creator competes for a finite population of agents. Fashion phenomena are shown to result from a collective phenomenon produced by local individual imitation effects. We assume that, in each step of the imitation process, agents only interact with a subset rather than with the whole set of agents. People are actually more likely to influence (and be influenced by) their close ''neighbours''. Accordingly we discuss which strategy is best fitted for new producers when people are either simply organised into anonymous reference groups or when they are organised in social groups hierarchically ordered. While counterfeits are shown to reinforce the first strategy, creating social leaders can permit to avoid them.