I was arguing that fashion trends are ultimately driven by consumers, not by companies (as GP was arguing). Consumers aren't blindly buying whatever's for sale.
Whether people are purchasing more than they need, or whether that's wasteful, is a totally orthogonal conversation.
But pretty sure most women need bags. And a lot of guys use backpacks too. They're not some artificial need invented by companies.
> Consumers aren't blindly buying whatever's for sale.
But of course they are. This is the case not just in fashion, but pretty much everywhere (and particularly visible wrt. hardware and software). Consumers are given a bit of a choice to get completely confused by it, but ultimately they pick something from what's for sale. They can't just go and say, "I want these trousers, except cut like these other ones, and with the color from that dress" - much like they can't go and say "I want a phone like this new iPhone, but with my damn headphone jack back". Not without spending 1-2 orders of magnitude more money.
What this means for our discussion is, it's vendors who set the trends, because they choose what is available for purchase at scale.
You're missing the point which is that vendors are making the products they think people will buy.
Vendors aren't arbitrarily setting "trends", they aren't inventing things in a vacuum.
They literally do market research, interview consumers, figure out what people want, and then try to give that to them.
Of course any single individual doesn't always get exactly what they want (the pair of pants, the phone but with a headphone jack), but collectively we do trend strongly towards that. Manufacturers aren't perfect, they don't always get it maximally correct, but they're generally trying their best, because, you know, competition.
You're right in that trends aren't arbitrary, but you've jumped from that idea to the idea that consumer needs are the reason. That's not the case. A large proportion of the time the reason why a particular trend is set isn't 'consumers want this'. It's 'the commodities to make this product are going to be particularly cheap this season - so margins should be healthy'. The McRib is a great example.
As a crystal clear example, do you think any consumer in their right mind wants their products shrinkflated? Do you think misleading packaging is based on satisfying consumer desires, or manipulating them?
I was arguing that fashion trends are ultimately driven by consumers, not by companies (as GP was arguing). Consumers aren't blindly buying whatever's for sale.
Whether people are purchasing more than they need, or whether that's wasteful, is a totally orthogonal conversation.
But pretty sure most women need bags. And a lot of guys use backpacks too. They're not some artificial need invented by companies.