I've seen it in regards to premium breads, in-app purchases, crude oil solvent levels, public infrastructure features, clothing, etc. This isn't a new thing. Sometimes you just spend money to fabricate culture when it isn't on your side.
>There isn't one person deciding what gets produced.
Is this really an appropriate standard for examining whether or not an organization can push culture rather than merely adapt to it?
But different companies can be trying to convince things that are totally opposed to each other too. It's still not monolithic. (Regardless of whether it's "one person" or not, it was just an illustration.)
At the end of the day it's still customers buying what they like from a range of companies that are all competing with each other, some succeeding and some failing.
You can zoom out from bags to fashion, and the same idea repeats itself.
Consumer consumption itself is the unified cultural zeitgeist. That's the issue - in some areas it'll spur innovation, but in others it is an obviously wasteful use of limited resources and time.
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.
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.
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?
The competition is for dollars, not for goodwill.
To the contrary, public opinion does decide. Brands are trying to guess what will sell and be in fashion, and produce that. But they get it wrong all the time, as sales plummet for a particular season collection because consumers don't like it but really like another designer who guessed better.
The fashion industry isn't monolithic. There isn't one person deciding what gets produced. Ultimately it is all consumer-led as brands compete to try to produce what people will buy -- and they know fashion-conscious people don't want to buy what was for sale the previous year. But individual brands get tastes wrong all the time -- even well-known brands have seasons where they just totally mess up.