Fashion: an object and a process

Abstract

Fashion is a culturally endorsed form of expression. It belongs to a particular material or non-material phenomenon, which is discernible at any given time and changes over time within a social system or group of associated individuals. In contemporary pecuniary culture "fashion" is an influence to major consumer purchase decisions in products such as automobiles, furniture, home furnishings, and housing architectural design and foods selections. The dissemination and acceptance of ideological movements, educational practices, scientific pursuits, and emerging lifestyles are forces of fashion directly influential to the fashion acceptance process. The central objective of this study is to define basic constructs and structured concepts which delineate a contemporary theory of fashion. Fashion can be conceptualized both as an object and as a behavioral process. The critical characteristics of fashion include fashion as an object and a process, are defined according to the selected study setting. The study setting was the 16th Century during a period that intensified Sri Lankan Indo Portuguese exchanges depends a lot on uncovering some of the various impulses that energized fashion and its process. The study reveals that the fashion process may be mechanistically characterized as a process of social influence and diffusion. The conceptual basis of the fashion process mechanism is developed based on perspectives from the classical and contemporary literature.