Malcolm Gladwell deems his book, The Tipping Point, the biography of an idea. This seems a particularly apt description for it. Gladwell names the "Tipping Point" as the point at which "The momentum for change becomes unstoppable". In the introduction to the book, he tells the story of Hush Puppies shoes, which were on their way out before mid-1994, then were suddenly popular. This is attributed to a small number of people who began wearing the shoes just because they were unpopular. Eventually, these people influenced other people, who also began wearing them to show how noncomformist and original they were. Finally, people began wearing them because they were actually popular.
Similar events can easily be discerned in more recent trends. For example (And, unimaginatively, I'm using another kind of shoe as my example), Chuck Taylors. People started wearing them to be original and nonconformist (seeing a trend yet?), and they got popular because other original, nonconformist teenagers saw people wearing them and decided to as well, because it would be original, nonconformist, and badass. Many revived trends can be traced to original, nonconformist groups of people, who popularized things and made them rather-conformist-but-still-somewhat-original.
But I, personally, must maintain that Chucks are badass.
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1 comment:
and to think, Chucks started out as a basketball shoe?
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