TEXTILES AND CLOTHING 85 
furs. This has reacted on the jobber, and thence on the manufacturer 
and the mills. 1 
Often there is a demand for fancy styles and novelties when 
staple lines are moving very slowly. This demand may come 
from extravagant consumers who desire to be stylish or it may 
have quite a different explanation. The flapper’s tweeds of 1921- 
22 were comparatively cheap garments and well adjusted to a time 
of depression and low purchasing power. The vogue for Egyptian 
and Oriental patterns following the discovery of “King Tut” car 
ried into consumers’ hands no small volume of old stocks and low- 
cost goods along with the higher-grade fabrics. 
Style, it should be understood, means far more than a sugges 
tive name or catch-phrase for a new fabric. Manufacturers have 
lost large sums by accepting the fallacy that a new name would 
assure success for an old fabric. Permanent success in dealing 
with the style factor requires a real creative effort, seeking to 
satisfy the yearning for self-decoration in a distinctive manner. 
“Those who can consistently do this are successful. The others 
all fail sooner or later.” 
As shown by Cherington : 1 2 
The complete life history of any particular vogue falls into five fairly 
well defined parts—(1) creation; (2) adaptation; (3) popularization; 
(4) large-scale production; (5) abandonment. But it must be kept in 
mind that these together make up the general or flock movement in which 
individual styles are coming and going. 
These steps in the life history of a mode are of varying length. 
Creation may be carried on over months, or may result from a stroke 
of genius and develop with great rapidity within a few weeks. In other 
words, a new style, once put before the public, may become commercially 
important at once; it may fall flat and be immediately abandoned; or it 
may merely arouse enough interest to justify further effort to develop 
it into a popular mode, although it may not become popular for several 
months. Similarly, the adaptation process may be successful at once, 
while in some cases it can be said to be complete only after weeks of trial 
and apparent failure. Large-scale production of style goods, on the 
other hand, is a relatively long process. It can be effected properly only 
after planning and preparation, involving a careful testing of the market 
1 N. Y. Journal of Commerce, October 23, 1923. 
2 “Some Commercial Aspects of Styles and Fashions in the Clothing and 
Textile Industries,” Harvard Business Review. July, 1924.