Fashion tastemakers – fashion tastebreakers?

My investigations into fashion’s process of change have focused on particular people who appear to be instrumental in making change happen. I describe these people as tastemakers – others describe them as influencers, arbiters of taste, style setters or cultural intermediaries. All of these terms give a general sense of what these people do (such as influencing, arbiting, which is settling a dispute according to OED, setting out an idea or look and mediating).

However, I prefer the term fashion tastemaker. It is an expression that makes the connection between fashion (as a way of dress) and taste (as something more universal, a personal and subjective sense of ourselves expressed through likes and dislikes). The way that this term fashion tastemaker incorporates dual aspects of 1) fashion – as something popular and collective and 2) taste – as our individual aesthetic preferences reflects contemporary attitudes to fashion.

The fashion consuming public are engaged with fashion like never before through digital technology, but no-one wants fashion trends that saturate society so we all end up looking the same. Fashion is both popular and collective, but it has also taken on greater significance as a way to make expressions about our individuality.

What about the ‘maker’ in the term fashion tastemaker? Are the fashion tastemakers actually making anything? I believe they are. In my research I have categorised the influential activities that these individuals undertake: originating or innovating fashion, performing fashion, making images of fashion, commentating on fashion and selecting particular fashion (I’ll talk more about my typology of fashion tastemakers in another post). All these activities make or produce fashion – in its material or immaterial forms, fashioning not only garments, but also fashionable representations.

Finding an appropriate descriptor for influencers has been persistently difficult. In 1960, James Johnston Sweeney proposed that these individuals be called tastebreakers rather than tastemakers. He argued that the best influencers are tastebreakers because their activities have the power to break current or accepted standards of taste – through their making of new taste they are breaking existing taste. I follow Sweeney’s thinking…however this places emphasis on their ability to rupture and disrupt taste; I prefer to focus on the productive outcomes of contemporary fashion tastemaking.

Sweeney, James Johnston. “Tastemakers and Tastebreakers.” The Georgia Review, 14, 1 (Spring 1960): 90-100.