The social diversification of fashion

Landi, P. & Dercole, F. (2016). The social diversification of fashion. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology 40 (3) 185-205. 10.1080/0022250X.2016.1200039.

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Abstract

We propose a model to investigate the dynamics of fashion traits purely driven by social interactions. We assume that people adapt their style to maximize social success, and we describe the interaction as a repeated group game in which the payoffs reflect the social norms dictated by fashion. On one hand, the tendency to imitate the trendy stereotypes opposed to the tendency to diverge from them to proclaim identity; on the other hand, the exploitation of sex appeal for dating success opposed to the moral principles of the society. These opposing forces promote diversity in fashion traits, as predicted by the modeling framework of adaptive dynamics. Our results link the so-called horizontal dynamics—the primary driver of fashion evolution, compared with the vertical dynamics accounting for interclass and economic drivers—to style variety.

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