Designs in Fine Fashion: A Model for Stylistic Innovation

Designs in Fine Fashion: A Model for Stylistic Innovation

Carlos Eduardo Thompson, Fashion Art Director , Visual Artist , Micro Entrepreneur , Poet , Writer , Archaeologist & Counselor of the Presidency of Brazil 

In this insight , I t propose a model of stylistic innovation that is the change in the aesthetic and symbolic elements of products and services. Style is an increasingly relevant phenomenon in many industries and our goal is to develop a model of how styles are introduced and adopted. I build on existent literature on technological change to frame the dynamics of how style changes across time. In the model I propose, companies face periods of ferment with relevant stylistic variations and periods of convergence on a single trend—that is the stylistic convergent design versus the technologic dominant design. I identify the drivers of convergence in stylistic innovation. I think the model with a longitudinal empirical study in the fine fashion industry, explaining the main differences between a stylistic and a technological evolutionary model. An abundance of innovations is constantly struggling for market acceptance in different industrial contexts. As a consequence, a large amount of researchers’ efforts has been devoted to the understanding of the sequencing of different designs and of the factors affecting the dominance of one specific design previous one the drivers of the affirmation of innovations and of dominant realities. The common thread of these realities is represented by the fact that they consider technology as a major driver for change, both at an industry and at an organizational level. Yet, in many contexts – from the automotive to the hotel one, not to mention creative industries, such as fashion and design – a growing portion of innovation is linked to the aesthetic and symbolic elements of the products or services, i.e. to their style.

As I points out ‘the issue is not what style is used but rather that style is used, consciously or conscientiously, even in areas where function used to stand alone’. The dynamics of affirmation of stylistic innovation have not so far been systematically addressed in the practical. Yet, this field of work appears as extremely relevant. Indeed, the aesthetic and symbolic elements are becoming more and more important in different contexts, even in those settings traditionally driven by technological standards. The mobile phone industry or the computer one are just two examples of settings where the affirmation of a new standard might be explained also by considering the stylistic elements of the products: the  factors explaining the emergence of a technological standard may not tell the whole story. The purpose of the work is to draw a conceptual framework for the affirmation and evolution of stylistic innovation in industries where the main driver of these innovative processes is not so much technology development as social changes.

I formulate specific hypotheses on the factors affecting the affirmation and adoption of stylistic innovation and we propose an evolutionary model of stylistic innovation in which companies face periods of ferment with relevant variations in the styles they propose and periods of convergence on a fashion trend. Notwithstanding the relevance of a single company’s ability in the definition of the style and the needs of differentiation on the customers’ side, we argue that for style – like for technology – convergence on a single standard matters, and that different styles are cyclically affected by a reference trend, that we define convergent stylistic design. Furthermore, we intend to show how the stylistic dimension affects some relevant aspects of the traditional cyclical model of technological change and how the convergent stylistic design is different from the technological dominant design. I test the conceptual framework on affirmation and decline of stylistic innovation through a longitudinal empirical study in the fine fashion industry.

Overall, we treat the fine fashion industry as a revealing context for understanding some innovation processes usually hidden in less style-focused industries. The relevance of stylistic innovation is so transparently obvious in the fine fashion industry that its analysis may lead one to draw insights that go beyond this industry and to develop concepts that might be applied to other industries where the role of style is likely to be somewhat more latent. The reminder of the article is organized as follows. Consumers increasingly make brand choices based on the aesthetic and symbolic value of products and services. Companies, on the other side, invest large amount of resources in developing new designs for the products and these designs have not as a primary goal to make the products more functional but more fashionable shows that the “look and feel” of people, places, and things, are more important than we think. This means that the aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of a product – that is its style – is increasingly relevant in many differentiated industries in order for a company to be successful, but “style is qualitative …it is hard to be assessed”.

In order to introduce the concept of stylistic innovation, we start from defining the concept of style, by adopting the metaphor introduced by leading sociologists according to whom style is a code composed of elements that join together like letters of the alphabet and are mixed up and thus give life to umpteen combinations pointed out: ‘style is a code, however, radically dissimilar from those used in cryptography; … it is of ‘low semanticity’. Perhaps it can best be viewed as an incipient or quasi-code, which, although it must necessarily draw on the conventional visual and tac-tile symbols of a culture, does so allusively, ambiguously, and inchoately, so that meanings evoked by the combination and the permutations of the code’s key terms are forever shifting or in process”. That is, the code’s key terms regard the aesthetics following conventional categories (colors, forms); the final combination of these key terms has an aesthetic value, but it can assume different and not completely predictable symbolic meanings. The aesthetic of a product or service is the sensory experience it elicits; it is related to those characteristics that create a product/service’s appearance, such as materials, proportion, color ornamentation, shape, and size. The symbolism regards the meanings or associations the product/service elicits. Product/service aesthetics frequently carry symbolic meanings: elegance, ease of use, youthfulness, and durability, may stem from aesthetic choices. For these reasons, we define style as both an aesthetic and a symbolic choice a company makes regarding the products/services, their main features, and how they are combined. Style is a ‘temporal’ phenomenon that has a short life span; it is an “obligatory transformation of taste”. As a phenomenon, it is characterized by a provisory life span: every style is temporary and inevitably destined to be abandoned because of its own popularity and diffusion sustained that style was created from a movement that later intensifies it. For this reason, innovation in style is an imperative for a company that decides to care of the aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of its products and services. Given the aesthetic and symbolic value of style, the stylistic innovation can be assimilated to the concept of symbolic innovation developed that is an innovation not relevantly linked to technological changes, but to symbolic changes. Symbolic innovations are those that “result from the reassignment of social meaning to an existing product, generating a secondary diffusion for it among those identifying with the relevant reference group”.

Our concept of stylistic innovation is broader than symbolic innovation one: a stylistic innovation results from the reassignment of social meaning to an existing product and/or from the change of the aesthetic characteristics of a product generating both a new product – from a physical point of view – and a new meaning. In contrast to technological innovation driven exclusively by the addition or the alteration of tangible features, stylistic innovation is mainly a change in the social meaning that is assigned. In the case of stylistic innovation, the physical form of the product can change – and it generally changes in its aesthetic characteristics – but this is not the relevant point: what is important, indeed, is the creation of different intangible meanings. Given the main focus on meanings, stylistic innovation is exposed to a phenomenon of ‘revival’: old styles can come back (e.g. the hippie style diffused in the 1970s came back in 2017 in Brazil and Argentine) when the meaning associated to it is again ‘in’ and relevant. Indeed, differently from the technical functionality, heavily affected by technological change, meanings can maintain their strength over time. Furthermore, technological innovation, by affecting the physical and tangible features of the product and its function, exists independently from a process of communication; on the contrary, stylistic innovation exists just if it is perceived and used by a specific social community. Indeed, the new meaning assigned to an existing or to a partially modified product exists just if a certain amount of people adopts this language to signal its belongingness to a specific reference group—that is a secondary diffusion process.

The explanatory power of this language relies on the intensity of the communication activity enacted by the companies inside the industry. For this vital need of social perception and social awareness, one of the most notable role in the industries driven by stylistic innovation is played by the press, able to sustain this process of reassignment of a new meaning to an existing product or of attribution of a fascinating meaning to a product with a new aesthetic form . When the product has a stylistic component, the press serves to emphasize the symbolic value and to de-emphasize the materiality of the products. When companies compete on products with a relevant stylistic component, the press has a crucial role as arbiter and/or witness of the success: they act as “gatekeepers” of these industries. Despite the growing relevance of style in different industrial settings, up to now no specific managerial models have been developed for stylistic innovation. On the contrary, the literature on innovation in high-tech industries has developed conceptual models useful in supporting organizational decisions on the edge of innovativeness. Many research studies have attempted to develop and corroborate models, which can predict the success and decline of design and technological standards.

One of the models presented received consistent empirical support: the cyclical model of technological change developed. In this model, technological innovation goes through different phases. A technological breakthrough initiates an era of technical variation and selection—the era of ferment. In this period, before one technological configuration prevails over the others, there are a number of different designs on the market, which are all very different in terms of technical characteristics and functional performance. The era of ferment is characterized by strong competition between different design processes and ends when one design prevails over the others. This phase is followed by another one defined as a period of incremental change in which the reference design is gradually modified and comes to a close, thus giving rise to a new period of ferment when the dominant design is modified to such an extent that it no longer represents a reference point that most manufactures interpret. In the case of technological innovation, the major rea-son behind convergence is represented by the technical compatibility issue that is particularly relevant whether there is a quite complex system of products note: “compatibility is a relational attribute that defines rules of fit and interaction across boundaries called interfaces”. In particular, technical compatibility is the attribute of a system of components that have to work together: they are compatible from a technical point of view if their tangible interfaces fit together. In order to work properly, the system needs a perfect integration of standard components, responding to the same techno-logical pattern. The adoption of the same technological standard produces positive network externalities for those companies adopting the same standard and enhances the switching costs – both for customers and producers – to a different design. 

The technical compatibility issue does not occur for stylistic innovation, because it works on social meaning and/or aesthetic elements that mostly regard intangible features of the product. It is the property of intangibility to make not relevant the technical compatibility issue. In this work, I argue that the irrelevance of technical compatibility does not enact differentiating behaviors—from both customers and producers. Indeed, I sustain that the technical compatibility explanation is substituted by both a social and aesthetic compatibility and that convergence emerges for stylistic innovation as in the case of technological innovation. Social compatibility is the first driver of convergence in stylistic innovation. Customers look for differentiation and distinction but also for recognizability as elite′. Being an elite′ means following the elite’s′ habits, behaviors, ways of dressing, that in order to be recognizable have to be similar and share the same characteristics. In this perspective, style becomes a distinctive expression of a privileged and exclusive social position: “The logic behind the production of high society goods and the strategy of distinction that is at the origin of their dynamics dictate that their use (i.e. fashion or literature, opera, etc.) renders the consumer more exclusive by serving as instruments of distinction”. From a consumer’s point of view, the desire for stylistic innovation is explained by the desire to own the ‘right’ products, but also by the desire “to interact with the ‘right’ people” For this reason, when a style is created it addresses a ‘cool’ and elitist community. Yet, particularly when a style succeeds, it creates messages that acquire meanings for a larger part of the community and that communicate who is in the right group to the members of this group but also the others.

As remarks, style is used as “a signaling device in a dating game (. . .). Customers want to signal their own quality to other customers because they are involved in a matching game in which each person would like to match up with a high-quality person rather than a low-quality person”. That is, a recognizable stylistic trend is necessary; each company’s style has to have some convergent characteristics in order to be used as a language to communicate in a specific community and to provide people of the community with a sense of belongingness. If customers require a common language to show their belongingness to an elite′ (but also to perceive the exclusion from an elite′ and the desire of belongingness), companies need to reduce the potential variety of their styles. That is, styles con-verge in the meanings they carry out in order to answer to a social need of convergence on a common language. This convergence is supported by the specific diffusion of the style on the demand side. As I remarked, a style is created to address an elite, ′ but the elitist aspiration does not mean that the stylistic product is exclusively sold to the elite′ during its entire life cycle. Indeed, we sustain that the demand for style over time displays both the snob and the band-wagon effects. If the ‘right’ people purchase a style (intentionally dedicated exclusively to them), it will be more valuable to all consumers, while if the mass of people purchases the design, it will be less valuable to all consumers. That is, “Since high types purchase the design commodity first, there is a bandwagon effect if few consumers buy the design, while there is a snob effect if many consumers buy the design”. These two different effects on the demand side are strictly linked to the convergent/divergent sequence on the supply side. Specifically, the convergence of the companies during the periods of incremental change is facilitated by the presence of an increasing number of ‘right’ buyers because of the bandwagon effect. The strength of the bandwagon effect supports the strength of the convergent style and affects the duration of the periods of incremental change. As far as the new style becomes popular, it will be imitated by mass-market companies and sold on the mass market. Whenever the convergent style spreads too much, the snob effect will prevail and this effect will drive the decline of the convergent style.

The strength of the snob effect affects the length of the period of incremental change and the beginning of the period of ferment. The bandwagon effect represents the phenomenon of increase in the demand of a product if others are consuming it. This phenomenon takes account of “the desire of people to wear, buy, do, consume, and behave like their fellows; they desire to join the crowd, be ‘one of the boys’, etc.” . The snob effect represents the opposite phenomenon where the demand of a product is decreased because others are consuming it. This phenomenon takes into account “the search for exclusiveness by individuals through the purchase of distinctive clothing, foods, automobiles, houses, or anything else that individuals may believe will in some way set them off from the mass of mankind”. In sum, given these considerations and using the definition of compatibility, we define social compatibility as the attribute expressing the coherence of a system of social meanings used in the same social context. In this case, the different components are compatible from a social point of view if their meanings fit together. We state that companies, on a side, and consumers, on the other side, look for a com-mon and coherent set of meanings and this phenomenon enacts a process of stylistic convergence. The second driver of convergence in stylistic innovation is linked to aesthetic compatibility.

The root of this concept is in the idea of visual fit of different products influencing the consumers’ aesthetic response, developed in the consumer behavior’s literature. Working on a system of products, intro-duce the concept of “visual display that connects its parts in a meaningful way” and that “involves some form of matching with respect to a salient visual characteristic”. To give an example, in the case of the choice of different objects in a kitchen the aesthetic coherence means that a person will prefer elements (microwave, toaster, scale, etc.) curve-shape, reflecting, and aluminum made, in order to have a ‘high-tech’ style kitchen. In an environment like this one, a translucent, red, plastic and squared toaster is not aesthetically coherent; it is not ‘in style’. More in general, there is a search for an aesthetic compatibility behind the fact that the most part of the household-electrics of last generation are curve-shape, light color and made in reflecting materials. Following these considerations, I define aesthetic compatibility as the attribute expressing a visual coherence in the aesthetic appearance of the elements located or used in the same context. I state that companies, on a side, and consumers, on the other side, look for a common and coherent set of aesthetic characteristics and this phenomenon is the other force behind the process of stylistic convergence. My framework builds on the two concepts introduced so far – the symbolic and the aesthetic compatibility – and emphasizes the relevance of convergence on a with cheaper materials. The perfect example of those stylistic imitative behaviors is Zara, the Spanish fashion retail. Imitative behaviors are facilitated by the absence of any kind of property rights on style. However, complexity of the meaning associated to the style can play a crucial role. A style carrying out an ‘easy’ meaning is more likely to face a snob effect (e.g. in our data this could be the case for the ‘animalier’ style with its message of aggressiveness); on the contrary a style carrying out a complex meaning will spread less rapidly out of the elitist group (e.g. in our data this could be the case for the ‘minimalist’ style).specific stylistic innovation. In sum, we argue that, like for technological innovations it is possible to identify an evolutionary model of stylistic innovation in which companies face periods of differentiation with relevant variations in the styles they propose (periods of ferment) and periods of convergence on a prevalent style (periods of incremental change).

In contrast with technology-based industries, we expect a more consistent number of styles and a less exclusive and mandatory stylistic trend. Considering that for each company style is also the device used to be recognized as a brand, and given customers’ need for distinction and the emergence of a snob effect, we expect a certain degree of differentiation among companies also during the era of incremental change and a certain degree of stylistic differentiation for each company in the same period of time. For these reasons, we define the stylistic trend as a convergent design, that is the style that most companies use as a reference point over a particular period, rather than a dominant design. In sum, we do not expect a clear phenomenon of dominance, but a certain degree of convergence. Similarly, with technology-based industries, we expect companies to play different roles and to have different opportunities during the periods of convergence and the periods of divergence. In particular, incumbents tend to have a consolidated style and they aim at preserving their own style and identity built over years, and at remaining coherent to this style to increase their reputation and recognizability whatever are the styles “in” in the period. For this reason, they tend to develop more the ability to innovate incrementally on a given style than the ability to generate new styles radically. Furthermore, incumbents rely on a specific knowledge asset related to the existing convergent style that may support them in incrementally innovating on the existing style itself. With respect to the convergent style, new entrants do not share the same resource endowment and the same knowledge of incumbents and the introduction of innovations on the convergent style would be much more costly and risky for them than for incumbents. In sum, we state that incumbents are facilitated in innovations in presence of a convergent style. On the contrary, if a reference style has not affirmed yet new entrants can deploy at best their ‘newness’ by creating a completely new style. In comparison with the incumbents, they are more able to invent something completely new, because of the lack of inertial frames, cognitive ‘sunk costs’, and existing routines. New entrants are often driven by dramatic creativity that may blow without any stickiness to the existent style or identity. In addition, these companies do not have any “cannibalization” issue to take into account. This issue, on the other hand, represents a major point for those companies that have been investing on a specific style over the years and are therefore less keen towards abandoning it. In sum, we state that new entrants are facilitated in innovations when a convergent style has not emerged. Differently from technological innovation, stylistic innovation exists just if it is perceived and its meaning is used by a specific social community. For this reason, companies’ stylistic success cannot be analyzed without considering their results in gaining secondary diffusion for their styles. That is, when stylistic innovation is the variable under investigation, the consideration of the traditional concept of company success might drive to misleading conclusions. Indeed, high revenues might come from a product that is very standard in terms of stylistic content, but exactly for this reason is sold to a large and less sophisticated population. The results gained in the secondary diffusion process are, instead, the issue to take into account: in the case of low visibility, the process of communication of the innovation will not be enacted and a social community will not appropriate the meaning associated to the style. This is the evidence of a low stylistic success.

Given these considerations, incumbents are supported in achieving success in stylistic innovation by their legitimacy and reputation towards consumers’ community. Indeed, with respect to the social community, they have an established position and they know which language works at best. In addition, with respect to the other companies in the market, they have the power to enact a process of cooperation and to create the organizational support necessary to reach convergence on a specific style. These incumbents’ abilities are particularly useful in stable context conditions, when a convergent style has emerged, and there is the opportunity to exploit the benefits of the bandwagon effect. Indeed, the convergence process allows incumbents to reduce the risk associated with their activity, while lowering the likelihood for a new entrant to become visible and to communicate new and socially significant meanings. On the contrary, new entrants have not to stick to consolidated styles and suffer less for the snob effect. For these reasons, they will be keen to creating very distinctive and disruptive styles, that consumers will appreciate for their ability to signal distinction. New entrants’ stylistic success is related to their ‘out of schemata’ character and to their ability in opposing to the stylistic status quo. For these reasons, they are more likely to be visible when a snob effect is enacted and a strict stylistic reference has disappeared. In these ambiguous and shifting conditions, new entrants represent newness and freshness and incumbents will be more likely associated with the ‘old regime’. Furthermore, because of their size, incumbents tend to suffer more for the lack of the bandwagon effect.

For these purposes, I talked run with five experts of the fine fashion industry, coming from different countries – e.g., fashion consultants, and fashion editors – and selected according to their reputation in the fashion world. An additional evaluation of my results by these experts was, then, useful in validating the classification of styles adopted. The second step was a content analysis of a fashion magazine published between 1984 and 2017. This part of the study has been undertaken to test the hypotheses. Explanations of the context of the study, of the variables used, and the method are given in the following sections. Despite the traditional view of fashion as a some-what ephemeral phenomenon, the fashion industry has been the subject of longstanding research in sociological literature. Recently, however, fashion has also become an interesting field of investigation in organization and management literature. There is a notable pecking order among fashion industry companies. At the highest level, there is “haute couture” (“high fashion”), which produces custom-made, one-of designs.

Next, there is pret?-a`-porter (“ready to wear”), which produces fashion products that the aver-age person would still think of as being quite expensive but which nonetheless can be bought off the shelf . Even within the fine fashion segment, there is a pecking order: high (e.g., Armani, Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, which stage the “runway” fashion shows in Milan, Paris, London and New York and are frequently quoted in the top trade magazines), middle (e.g., Calvin Klein, Max Mara, Banana Republic), and low (e.g., Zara, Gap, Benetton). Our focus in this article is on the high end of pret?-a`-porter or what is usually referred to as the “fine fashion” industry. Style is the main product of the fine fashion industry. It can be defined as an aesthetic choice regarding the individual pieces of its entire col-lection (including clothing and accessories), their main features, and how they are combined. More specifically, the fashion style is made up of various types of textiles and fabrics, weavings, color combinations, mixing and matching garments, volumes and shapes, silhouettes. In the fine fashion, each company wants to be characterized by a distinctive and recognizable style over time, but at the same time, it has to consider the trends that affect the whole industry for specific periods.

For example, the trend of the early 1990s was “minimalism”, a style (initially associated with the company Prada) characterized by an extremely feminine and soft cut (skirts are more common than pants for women), knee (or calf)-length unstructured clothing in black, a few other pale colors, no printed patterns and natural and unusual fabrics. Given these considerations, we argue that the fine fashion industry is a revelatory context of investigation and, compared to industries such as home furniture and consumer electronics, it represents the context with the longest life span where stylistic innovation is the core of the offering. The population I took into consideration to test my hypotheses is composed by all the companies cited at least once in Vogue Italia magazine between 1984 and 2017. All the experts contacted during the preliminary research phase considered Vogue Italia. The use of Vogue Italia as primary source of data is crucial in order to monitor stylistic innovation because it has been considered for years as the key player in the reassignment of the meaning through the secondary diffusion process, that is the core characteristic of the stylistic innovation. The use of this specific magazine brought several advantages. First, I were able to run a longitudinal analysis: Vogue Italia maintained the same structure over the period of my insight. The comparability of data is particularly important for researches, like this one, whose object is the study of a trend. Second, I could collect a large sample that let us obtain reliable results. Third, the collected data are high-quality data, because articles have been written by industry experts and addressed to qualified and competent readers. Finally, the longstanding reputation of Vogue and need for news in the market for information is the guarantee of a sustainable degree of neutrality and independence in judging companies within the industry. The longstanding reputation of Vogue is the best guarantee against a systematical preference for the most powerful players. In addition, a real judgmental independence is maintained also because of the contextual action of two relevant forces, one favoring incumbents (for their recognizability, their economic power, etc.) and the other favoring new entrants (for the newness they represent). In fact, press communication is completely based on news: in the absence of news in the style, Vogue would lose its primacy on the market for information.

The powerful and recognizable players are more likely to stick to a specific style and to maintain uniformity over time; on the contrary, new designers are easily associated with newness. Not by chance, a recognized capability of the Vogue editors is the one of ‘discovering’ and launching new and unknown talents able to invent radically new styles. In order to build our database, we did not consider any form of advertising paid by companies and we included exclusively the quotations mentioned in the magazine articles. The population of the analysis has changed over time. Indeed, the years 1985–1990 are considered as years of radical cultural developments that invested different aspects of social and economic life. In the fashion industry this expansion has boosted the growth of existent fashion houses, but has also encouraged the emergence of new designers in France, Italy, the US, and Japan. The 1990s are considered as a period of recession, with a strong reaction to the ostentatious consumption and production that had characterized the previous years. A new sobriety is introduced, especially during the second half of the 90s, with a strong attention from many designers to wear ability, quality and value. These tendencies, together with a contraction in the consumption, have acted as a deterrent to companies’ proliferation. The study sample seems to be consistent with previous researches conducted on technological convergence and relative to a specific industry. Consistently with the definition previously given, a style is the combination of the following elements: The selection of the items of clothing to use (skirts, trousers, jackets, sweaters, dresses and suits) and how they are combined. The selection of the cut (close-fitting, constructed, soft, etc.), color (muted or bright colors), length (especially skirts and trousers: mini-skirts, knee-length or calf-length skirts, etc.), fabric (synthetic or natural, processed or unprocessed raw material), and patterns (printed, geometric or flower designs, etc.) and how they are combined. We identify periods of convergence and divergence of companies on styles. In particular, one period is defined as a period of “incremental change” if it is characterized by a convergent style adopted by the majority of companies within the sample (over 50%); in the opposite case, it is defined as a period of “ferment”. Furthermore, a greater mean number of new designs than a period of incremental change given these definitions, in order to test, characterizes a period of ferment; I identify the percentage of companies adopting each style. I classify as convergent a style adopted by at least 50% of the reference population in a given year.

Then, I measure the number of new styles. Each style is considered as new for a particular year if it is presented for the first time that year. This means that in a new style there could be elements (cut, color, length, fabric and pattern/graphics) already adopted in the past, but their combination is new, never seen before. In each year, we have a percentage of old styles and a percentage of new styles; we take into account the mean number of new styles per year in each period of ferment and the mean number of new styles in the period of incremental change. The work aims at evaluating the strength of the evolutionary model for the stylistic innovation. Consequently our empirical analyses test companies’ convergence over time on specific styles and evaluate the impact of the companies’ positions (incumbents or new entrants) on stylistic innovation and stylistic success. The first convergent style is the ‘masculine’ one: in 1984, 60.6% of companies adopted this style. It can be traced back to the ‘career woman’s uniform’ first introduced by the Italian company Armani at the beginning of the 1980s. The first period of ferment occurs between 1985 and 1990, when the relative frequency associated with the masculine style gradually decreases from 29.7% to 0.51%. In this period many diametrically opposed styles emerge. In 1989, the minimal style appears on the scene (31.4%).

In contrast with the previous androgynous style, it is characterized by extremely feminine cut (skirts are more common than trousers), unstructured clothing in pale colors, neutral tones and unusual fabrics. The ‘minimal’ style beats the competition and becomes the second convergent style: from the end of 1990 and the starting of 1991, the relative frequency of this style increases from 31.6% to 68.1%. The following period of incremental change lasts from 1991 until 1993: during this period, the minimal style decreases from 68.1% until about 50%. The second period of ferment starts at the end of 1993 as the minimal style decreases below the 50%. During this period, one new rival style emerges, namely, the kitsch style (between 1995 and 1998 its relative frequency increases from 17.1% to 42.8%). From the very beginning, it presents itself as directly opposed to the minimal style in its use of artificial materials, strong colors and combinations that clash. The ‘kitsch’ style becomes the convergent style between 1998 and 1999: during these years, this style increases from 42.8% to 75.7% in designers’ preferences. It is characterized by combinations of traditional fabrics (silk, linen, satin) with new materials such as metal, PVC, plastic, in colors decorated with sequin, rhinestones, feathers, fringes and tiny mirrors. The following period of incremental change lasts until 2001, when the kitsch style drops below the 50%.The third period of ferment starts in 2002.

The second period of incremental change falls exactly at the beginning of the economic renaissance (and indeed 2016 is a year with a high increase in the number of designers). Of course, the influence exerted by general environmental changes is important, but it does not change the predictions of the evolutionary model. Indeed, the difference between the second period of ferment and the second period of incremental change, although smaller than those registered in the other periods, is still positive. My results provide insightful contributions to the theory of innovation, exploring the new concept of stylistic innovation and its evolutionary dynamics. First, while previous studies provided detailed results on the dynamics of technological change, we analyze innovation in the aesthetic and symbolic elements of products and services. Furthermore, we elaborate on the concept of stylistic success. When studying stylistic innovation, the consideration of traditional indicators of performance might drive to misleading conclusions and the results gained in the secondary diffusion process represent a better indicator. Indeed, so far research on symbolic and cultural industries has emphasized the importance of differentiation in competitive dynamics: companies tend to advantage and emphasize the uniqueness of their internal resources and image. On the contrary, our empirical results show that companies develop convergent behaviors also as far as symbolic and aesthetic changes are concerned. As for technological innovations it is possible to distinguish between periods of convergence—where the major part of the companies adopt the same style and periods of divergence or ferment—where different styles live together. Yet, the different drivers behind the convergence dynamics produce relevant differences between technological and stylistic innovation. Unlike technological innovation, there is never a dominance phenomenon but a convergence one. Considering the emergence of snob effects, consumers’ need for distinction, and the signaling power of style for companies, we found the presence of convergent designs rather than exclusively dominant designs. Indeed, in the case of stylistic innovation the new standard does not render the previous one obsolete and does not completely replace it. Indeed, the characteristics of stylistic innovation drive the creation of market niches where those companies that do not adopt the convergent style or do not exclusively focus on that trend might also come out to be stylistically successful.

Just as an example, Dolce & Gabbana from the time it appeared on the scene successfully differentiated itself by proposing a rich and baroque style inspired to the 1950s Sicilian context while competitors were converging on the minimalist style. In addition, each company adopts more than one style per year, even if one of these can prevail over the others. Prada, considered as the creator of minimalism in fine fashion, provides an example. During the minimalist era, Prada adopted two other styles (the masculine and the dandy style) as well, even if with lower emphasis. Likewise, technological innovation, our empirical study highlights the relevance of the companies’ positions for the innovation and the success rate. Regarding the innovation rate, we found strong similarities between technological and stylistic innovation: incumbents are more innovative than new entrants in periods of incremental change because of their knowledge of the existent styles; new entrants are more innovative than incumbents in periods of ferment because of their ‘out of the schemata’ character and the lack of inertial frames, cognitive ‘sunk costs’, and existing routines. Regarding the success rate, we found some specificities: the nature of stylistic success related to the secondary diffusion process seems to favor incumbents even more than in the technology-based industries. As with all research, ours is subject to limitations. A first limitation is in the consideration of a single industrial setting, that is the fine fashion one. Although we chose this industry because revelatory for the phenomenon under investigation, we are aware that additional researches could strengthen our evidences. Second, stylistic innovation is a relatively young kind of innovation – in particularly if compared to technological one – and, as a consequence, this phenomenon offers a shorter time span of analysis for research. Third, my study relies on the use of quotations from a leading magazine within the context under analysis.

This choice, as discussed earlier, is due to the nature of stylistic innovation and stylistic success and we have to trust the long-standing reputation of the magazine used as guarantee of independent judgment. This is a common limitation for longitudinal studies, especially for those industries under explored in literature. Furthermore, when symbolic and aesthetic changes are under investigation the objective track of product modifications does not allow any conclusion and secondary sources play the fundamental role. Notwithstanding the discussed caveats, we may conclude that our logic has served its purpose and offers implications and insights for further explorations. First, we focused on stylistic innovation with a specific reference to symbolic industries, but we expect to find similar dynamics in other industries. Whenever a “stylistic” content is present even marginally, companies need to look for some coherence in the aesthetic and symbolic features of their offers.

This consideration drives another relevant insight of my insight, related to complementarities between stylistic and technological innovation. I believe that there are conditions under which technological innovation and the stylistic innovation reinforce each other. In my mind the complementarities emerge when technological innovations in the materials and into the production sys-tem enlarge, the potential variety companies can rely on to create new styles. The complementarities are even more evident in technology-based context, when the power of stylistic innovation is used to make a technological innovation be accepted more easily on the market. This is the case of the mentioned example of iPod, where the innovation in the message is amplified by the newness of the technological features and technical functions are more appreciated because of the stylistic innovation. The insights I presented open to further researches on stylistic innovation in different industries and on the exploration of complementarities between stylistic and technological innovation, so far underdeveloped in the literature. In conclusion, we believe our study significantly con-tributes to shed light on a complex multifaceted phenomenon – stylistic innovation – and offers a new path for investigating innovation also in over explored contexts.