Gladwell’s Ketchup Problem applied to Fashion

by smitikumar

One of Malcolm Gladwell’s most interesting articles ever is on the ketchup conundrum. In case you haven’t heard about it do check out his 2004 TED Talk ‘Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce’. The basic idea behind the TED Talk is that there is no perfect, in this case, spaghetti sauce ( which is essentially tomato sauce with condiments) for the entire population. Which is not really unexpected as individual preferences are bound to creep in. It was found that the preferences could be clubbed in to clusters. While this is true for other stuff like coffee, the ketchup conundrum stems from the fact that there seems to be genuinely one perfect ketchup. The other thing about food according to Gladwell is that people don’t know what they like. They will never be able to vocalise their preferences accurately.
While market segmentation has existed for a long time now, fashion seems to not follow any of the established rules. Within cultural context fashion is the popular practice of clothing, footwear,accessories, makeup etc. From an individual perspective fashion may be the habitual style of dressing the person adopts in keeping with the larger social context. So essentially in a society fashion may be a form of self expression but one severely limited by the popular practice. So it is just not as simple as coffee preferences. You can’t just go by what you intrinsically prefer (often this may be latent. But once you’ve found that perfect coffee you won’t drink anything else). That is if you want to fit in. So were you able to identify clusters of preferences at one particular time, in one particular cultural aspect for instance in jeans- say skinny and non skinny, it’s not as simple a matter as what you prefer deep, down inside. Drinkers of Nescafe would not have strong opinions about Bru drinkers.(or at least I hope not) That’s not true for fashion. I recently, after a lot of aerobic activity in various trial rooms across the city bought a pair of Levi’s jeans (which may arguably be the most popular brand for jeans in India among women in the upper middle income group).
They fit well and were exceedingly comfortable with what I felt was just the right amount of roominess. Or so I thought.
My first indication that I was on my way to making a fashion gaffe should have been the salesman’s suggestion that I should try out the other Levi’s curve jeans which were more appropriate for my build. I assured him I knew what I was doing and bought the jeans.The first time I wore the pair one well meaning male friend informed me that he was sure that even the very conservative women in the North Indian small town he came from wore more fashionable jeans. But you obviously don’t take fashion advice from men so I brushed off his remarks. It was all downhill from there sadly. Another friend told me the pair didn’t qualify as skinny jeans at all. I offered to show her the label on the back of the jeans which said they were skinny, but she still refused to believe me. Any way the jeans have been hanging in my closet for about two months now. The following weekend I bought a pair of Benetton Jeans that fit me like second skin. I don’t take them off, I peel them off.
In India fashion is a relatively new concept as compared to the west. Until quite recently in the pre globalisation days fashion did not change quite so rapidly or so distinctly. A lot of what catches on in terms of fashion comes from Bollywood movies. An interesting concept is something called anti-fashion. Anti fashion changes little over time and may be distinctive of a region or culture. A bit like ketchup in Gladwell parlance. For a specific culture or region a particular kind of clothing does not change and would be considered perfect in that context.