1. AMD 252: Dress and Culture
Assignment #3: Fashion Innovation and Diffusion
The purpose of this final project is to apply concepts and processes related to postmodernism and fashion
(Kaiser, pp.401-10, Ch 14, 15). This will be a powerpoint presentation project and will account for 20%
of your grade.
Please select one of the following Underlying Themes in Postmodern Fashions to be the basis
of your powerpoint presentation:
1. Fashion originates on the “streets”
2. There is increasing emphasis on ornaments and decoration
3. Cultural categories are distorted, confused, undermined
4. Traditions of dress are challenged
5. Styles are recycled from the past
6. Changes in fashion are volatile, ephemeral, accelerated
7. There is an unstable aesthetic code
8. Collapse of distinctions among fashion levels (high vs, mass, etc)
Please use the following format for your presentation. Please note the point spread for the various
components.
I. Theme (15 pts)
Demonstrate through images how your theme (that you selected from the list above) is
apparent in society at the present time. Use captions to briefly define the images and how they
demonstrate your theme. You may be creative and abstract here if you so desire.
II. Appearances (20 pts)
What indications do you see TODAY in cutting edge ideas, styles, products or practices that are
expressive of the theme that you have selected? Use pictures, collages, illustrations, video clips,
youtube links, etc., to demonstrate. Knowing that fashion is usually evolutionary and not
revolutionary, make a prediction about the next fashion to emerge based on your theme. What
will it look like? FASHIONS THAT ALREADY EXIST CANNOT BE USED HERE. Your
idea must be an “innovation (something new).” It can be practical or impractical, wild, crazy, or
completely serious and functional. The only wrong idea here would be a fashion that already
exists.

2. III. Emerging Fashion (30 pts)
Describe the emerging fashion that you are proposing (from above) and how it demonstrates the
current cultural context of postmodernism. Use the concepts of consumerism, pluralism,
fragmentation and ambivalence to describe and explain the fashion (not all concepts may apply –
use the ones that DO apply.) Describe which theory of fashion leadership is responsible for this
fashion (i.e., Trickle Down, Collective Selection, etc) Describe who the innovators of this
fashion are (or will be) and how it will be introduced to the public.
IV. How will this fashion “diffuse” through society? (35pts)
Use Sproles six sequential phases (Fig 15-6, p. 493) to describe how the fashion will spread from
innovators, to opinion leaders, to fashion followers and finally to decline and obsolescence. Use
information from the fashion life cycle and the theories of fashion to help describe the diffusion
of your fashion through society. (see external links for slides you can use or adapt).
Submit this powerpoint presentation under the Assignment button on Blackboard by the date
designated by your instructor.