A study of the modeling of fashion in social science and natural science

Abstract

This paper attempts to show that some methods of natural science can be utilized in sociological studies to analyze and formulate the whole process of fashion. As sociologist Tarde predicted a century ago, a custom-based society in the past has been transformed into a fashion-based society. There can be found numerous forms of fashion in almost every field of our daily life. Fashion is now recognized as being highly influential even in a nation's economy. Little is known, however, about the mechanism which controls the rise and fall of fashion. Its obscurity and formlessness has discouraged scholars from dealing with fashion as an object of academic researches. To break the deadlock, the modeling of fashion as a social phenomenon is indispensable.