Fashion vs Style

Here we touch on the differences between Fashion and Style, and how to use those differences when inspiring our key segments.

Topic Overview:

• Fashion is not style. Style is not fashion.

• Style is innate and timeless

• Fashion is manufactured and temporary.

• There are ‘fashion led’ segments [Budget Fashionista and Polished Professional] and ‘style led’ segments [New Expressionist and Refined Achiever] and a segment [Streetwear Sophisticate] that splits the two depending on generation.

• Knowing the relationship between fashion and style is essential to inspiring our key segments.

Words by Ruby Pseudo

The words ‘fashion and style’ tend to be interchangeable with one another in conversation, yet there are critical differences between the two which are imperative to grasp in terms of understanding our segments on a deeper level. Indeed, not all of our segments are ‘fashion segments’; some are style-based, and some are fashion-led. And some - perhaps rather confusingly at first read - are both. However, let’s break that confusion down and get clarity.

Style, simply, is innate. It is something ‘within’ the individual and is about knowing oneself inside and out. As Refined Achiever Iris told us, “I know what suits me, I know colours work for me, I know what I can and can’t wear.” She then admits - without apology - “my style hasn’t changed in twenty years.” Next to that, when we asked 63-year-old Refined Achiever and Tik-Tok star Giovanni to explain fashion to us, he replied, “you can set your f**king watch by it: it changes every ten minutes.”

Listening to these two Refined Achievers talk, we can see that the actual timeline and lifespan of style and fashion is therefore important. Fashion is temporary, and style is not. Style is something that stays, that sticks, it doesn’t go away. Fashion, however, is fleeting; it’s fast and often, it’s rather flippant. This is also why we talk about ‘style-based’ [as in, it has firm foundations] but ‘fashion-led’ [its instructions come from elsewhere, we are ‘led’ to fashion]. We use this terminology of ‘style-based’ and ‘fashion-led’, therefore, throughout the segmentation.

The other important thing that’s so crucial to understand - returning to this idea of ‘innateness’ - is that fashion can be begged, borrowed and learned, whereas style is far less easy to mimic. So, quite simply, you either have style or you don’t. And if you do have style, that style is ‘effortless’ to you because of that innateness; it has become a part of you and part of who you are.

For example, think of the most stylish people you know, and you’ll realize that there’s probably some sense of ‘magic’ or ‘mystery’ to their look, in that they can pull off things that other people can’t [particularly for our New Expressionists]. Again, this returns to the idea that style cannot be ‘learned’; it is built from experiences and moments, ones that are profoundly personal and striking to the individual. On the other hand, fashion is bought in stores, sold to us through magazines and ‘stolen’ from Instagram. And this is okay; it’s the algorithm of fashion. There is no ‘wrong’ or ‘right’. Style and fashion are simply two different things.

For our Refined Achiever Iris, her style-striking personal moment came at a very young age. When she was 12-years-old, she saw a woman picking flowers in a small village in Germany. She was wearing an oversized men’s shirt, had her hair in braids and was wearing beaten-up, well-loved sandals. “I still dress like that woman, she struck me even when I was so young. I basically have her style.” This was Iris’s style moment, and the moment itself and the memory of it were so striking that it shaped her. For her, it’s meant forty years of not following fashion, she knew how she wanted to look and didn’t care whether it was the fashion at the time or not. As she explained it to us, “I would hate to be called fashionable, I would hate it. It would be an absolute insult to me.”

And this idea [of being insulted by the word ‘fashionable’] actually really helps us delineate between the segments, figuring out which segments are fashion-led and which segments are style-based.

A Budget Fashionista, for instance, will be very flattered to be told they are fashionable, in fact, you’ll probably make their day. If we walk up to a Budget Fashionista and say, ‘I love your look! You’re so fashionable!’ they would smile, thank us and accept the compliment. For the Polished Professional, the reaction would probably be the same, especially since fashion is something that can overwhelm them a bit.  However, for the New Expressionist and Refined Achiever, they’d be somewhat taken aback [and probably insulted] if you said ‘you look so fashionable!’ to them. They would react far better, however, to the sentence ‘Oh my gosh, I love your style!’ - something they probably hear quite often. For style - personal style - is what they have, they don’t chase trends or flaunt fashion, it’s of very little interest to them.

For the Streetwear Sophisticate, it gets a little bit complicated, but that’s simply because the actual culture of Streetwear is complicated right now. For a true Streetwear Sophisticate, one that knows the culture, knows the background of brands and has intelligence and understanding around the scene itself, they too would be horrified to be called ‘fashionable’. They have a look, an intelligent look, and it’s style-based as well as [Streetwear] culture-based. So, to keep things clear, we call them a style-based segment.

Yet, we’re all aware that a new era of Streetwear is here, one where fashion and street became its own collaboration. This has, noticeably, changed the context of things somewhat. For instance, I once interviewed a ‘sneakerhead’ who told me she loved the Nike NMD sneakers. Pause: let’s take a minute there. 

Okay, so some of you will be shaking your head laughing and some of you will be going, 'Uh, what? I don’t get it.' 

NMDs are an adidas model, not Nike. This consumer [we’ll call her Maria, simply because, uh, that’s her name] was a fashion-led Streetwear Sophisticate, she was into Streetwear because it had become fashionable. So - when we’re working with the Streetwear Sophisticate, we have to know whether we’re dealing with a 'pure' one - who will be style-based - or a ‘rookie’ one, who has been led by fashion into the culture. They’ll still wear the same things sometimes, however, the true and pure Streetwear Sophisticates will be the ones to pull the look off in a more intelligent and stylish way. The fashion-led Streetwear Sophisticate is probably rocking a whole mish-mash of Streetwear references without knowing who the hell is who.

Another delineation we can grant the segments is the idea of safety: the fashion-led consumers enjoy the safety of fashion, as it is a look that has been ‘confirmed’ and validated for them, whether through brands, influencers or others. So, for them, they have seen this look enough times to know it is fashionable, on trend and current. ‘Current’, therefore, is their currency. They want to be safe in their look and don’t want to stray far away from what is fashionable and safe.

For the style-based consumers, they couldn’t give a flying f**k what anyone else thinks about their look, their currency is ‘confidence’ and a very personal confidence at that. They have confidence in what they wear because it’s innate to them; as New Expressionist Monty puts it perfectly, it’s her ‘sixth sense’. And it is. Their validation comes from inside them, a natural knowledge of their own look and their own style, of what suits them and what doesn’t. The style-based segments don’t need confirmation from others or an industry because they know themselves far better than any industry or other ever could.

Reference Quotes

And finally, if you’re wondering why we didn’t include quotes from the Polished Professionals on this, it’s because they couldn’t explain it, but here’s them trying...