Velocity of the Fashion Process in Women's Formal Evening Dress, 1789-1980

This study tests the proposition that the fashion process is accelerating by utilizing quantitative data and time series analysis. Metrical measurements of persistent features of women's formal evening dress (skirt length, skirt width, waist length, waist width, decolletage length, decolletage width) are taken from high fashion magazines and averaged to create yearly means, thereby creating a time series of 192 years. A methodology is described which deals with the magnitude of change from one year to the next in the means of each of the dress features. The velocity of the fashion process is found to be not accelerating in women's formal evening dress but rather is highly variable and episodic. What does exhibit a significant increase through time is the within-year variance of the variables.