What causes people to all at once buy the same type of thing, such as those sunglasses with the giant gaudy insignias on the sunglasses temples?

I’m the nerdy one who doesn’t care what everyone is wearing; I just wear what I like. I agree it’s interesting how the masses will adopt fashion, sometimes ugly fashion, because it’s in the stores as a new line.

Marketing and Advertising engulfs the people via all modalities. And using pretty young people helps to promote that gaudy pair of glasses. Ofcourse some will argue that they like them, but most of the time they purchase on impulse in response to all that advertising they are exposing themselves to.

mob mentality, media brainwashing.. it’s the little things that make it all worth while. and people who buy $200 sungalsses have wayyy too much money and should paypal some to me. just saying

Some people have to follow the fashion herd, power of propaganda. I intentionally stay away from such things, almost anything considered fashionable looks ridiculous on me.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land, I’m always confused at what causes everyone to do the same thing in these matters. But sometimes I think the trend is way sillier and goofier looking then at other times. Like after Flashdance, when lots of girls wore ripped up sweatshirts. Yeah it’s weird how lots all at once glammed onto that, but at the same time, it wasn’t a horrible goofy look. It was simplistic and kinda sexy.

But the shiny baubles on glasses? That confuses me more than ever. Seems so Joan-Riversish.

Baaaaa, flock mentality.

“It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.“ -Oscar Wilde
“Fashion is more powerful than any tyrant.” -Latin Proverb
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” -Thomas Jefferson.

I can’t stand MotoGP stars wearing colored wayfarers. To me they are the most hideous thing possible.

I like the big surf look

You should give example images for what you think is bad.

somewhat slanted to the topic.. Lady YAYA starts wearing all this crazyness, and I’m thinking I haven’t seen stageware like that since Rev. Manson. Then I looked closer..and I swear she looked just like him. At any rate, I think they should hook up and create little 2 feet heel wearing, Shock/Pop Rockin’, babies.

Don’t be afraid of fashion.

I wear what I like and feel comfortable in.I am at the age where I don’t care what everybody else thinks… Once upon a time I cared like in my 20’s and a teenager. Don’t like it don’t look

People see things in magazines and in other media of new products or celebrities wearing something and they like it so they buy it. Media appeals to the masses, so masses of people go out and buy the same thing. Also, if a popular store like Topshop start making something, other stores do too. Whatever is in season- clothes, accessories and makeup change between spring, summer, autumn and winter. It’s just fashion, some is ugly and boring (ugg boots) and other trends can be a lot of fun. Really it’s consumerism and it’s wasteful and can be difficult to keep up with. Oscar Wilde said “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

I can understand fashion things, if big celebrities start wearing them. But what gets me is all the cars that going around with those fake… I don’t even know what they’re called… Speed holes? Engine vents? Usually three fake holes on either side of the front fenders. Around here they’re very popular, but they look kind of dumb.

Remember middle school when suddenly the lunch room began to segregate into tables of the most popular kids, then tables with the tier-2 wannabes and on down to the “nerds” and finally the “retards”? It appears to be a trick of evolution. We developed as hunter gatherers and natural selection equipped us well for survival on a challenging, dangerous savanna. Survival required cooperation in groups, so relationships and the things that support tribal connectedness became vital survival skills that natural selection expertly honed in most evolving hominids.

There are no more saber-toothed tigers or cave bears hunting us. Humans long since parlayed the tools natural selection provided us, the brain power and the group hunting prowess, and we systematically eliminated each species as a threat. But the tribal desire, the wish to fit in and be accepted by a larger, significant group, is just as strong as it was when our survival depended on it.

So I would say it’s the same thing that leads people to drill holes in theip noses or lips or ears and stick bones through them, or put a series of concentric brass rings on their baby’s head to shape it into a cone. In one view it makes no sense. But in another, when viewed by the underlying drive to fit in, it is the most human and natural behavior you can imagine. All it takes is for one of the A Table people to do something new, and pretty soon all the wannabes are marching in lockstep. Only the nerds ignore the trend, because ignoring trends is a vital part of fitting into the tribe they chose.

My mother called the phenomemon “What they say”. With memories of wearing woolen suits to Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur services and thinking only about sweating on a 80˚ day, I shudder. At 95+, she has only recently stopped doing this.

Mob mentality I suppose

@ETpro GA :) makes a lot of sense.

Cool hunting.

@wundayatta – Pattern Recognition – by William Gibson!

@ETpro – GA!

Also: ‘Fashion fades, only style remains the same’ – Coco Chanel

You can choose to follow fashion, but it’s how you wear it and your aura that make it count. I think to buy something that you don’t particularly like in order to follow fashion is pretty stupid.

I guess one big question that still lingers… is when people succumb to a fashion like this… is it done consciously on their part? Or subconsciously…. in that that don’t even think about it, they just buy the glasses? Are people who buy those glasses self-aware of the reasons they think they like those glasses?

And here’s a pic of one of many examples: Sunglasses with insignia
.

@Kraigmo Surely consciously? How could it be subconscious? You’d have to consider them somewhat.

Fad and Fashion are the names of it, but the psychology behind it is probably the need to be like the people you admire.

sunglasses, bentleys, and of course Cristal in the fridge. everyone wants to be a rockstar.

Well today a girl with these very type of sunglasses walks into my work.
And she was the sweetest person. So if there’s any more sweet people who have these glasses, don’t take my Question personally, please, ‘cuz there’s a huge chance i’d like you very much anyway.