Fashion Preferences of Males and Females, Risks Perceived, and Temporal Quality of Styles

Abstract

In two separate projects, female university students responded to eight dress styles and male students responded to eight men's suit styles. Styles represented current, classic, newly‐introduced, and outdated fashions. Responses to polar adjectives showed that subjects could discriminate among styles that were in different stages of the fashion cycle and that they perceived different patterns of risk in styles that were in different temporal categories. Subjects preferred current and classic styles to newly‐introduced and outdated styles; the order of preference among styles was more closely related to aesthetic appeal (an element of social‐psychological risk) than to economic or per formance risk. In general, both sexes chose the same adjectives to describe their best‐ liked styles. Responses of males and females were similar in most respects, although research procedures differed between the two projects.