Ray-Ban Wayfarers & Theories of influence

by asi

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Last Saturday at Lovebox something stroke me as odd and fascinating: every other person among the 30,000 people who were there sported Ray-Ban Wayfarer. Seriously I can’t remember the last time I observed spread of an outfit on such scale. And it’s not just in Lovebox of course. Started couple of years ago, Wayfarer made an almighty comeback in 2009. (It IS the Summer of comeback indeed)

My immediate reaction was…HERD! HERD! but then I also had a vague recollection of seeing in a magazine few months back a photo of Jude Low sporting them so perhaps Wayfarers are the Hush Puppies of 2009?.

I wish I had the time and data to make a more solid analysis, looking at the spread of Wayfarers as an interesting case to test two competing theories of influence. i.e. Gladwell’s Tipping Point (the law of the few influentials etc) vs. The Network theory of Duncan Watts and Mark’s Herd. But a quick (re)search is still quite revealing.

One of the most enduring fashion icons of the 20th century, they first gained massive popularity following Audry Hepborn’s sporting them in the classic 1962′s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Since then, Wayfarers are on a cyclical course – from massive popularity to being deeply unclool (70s) to then be resurrected again as the epitome of cool (80′s) and vanish yet again until the recent comeback that started probably in 2006 and reaches it’s height this summer.

From President Kennedy to Deborah Harry, Tom Cruise to Don Johnson, Cheloe Sevigny to Jack Nicholson, Paris Hilton to MGMT, every decade had it’s own rock and film stars sporting these classic shades and allegedly bringing them back from the abyss of lost cool to be, once again, the Summer must haves.

So Gladwell is right? All it takes is few cool, famous people to start a trend? Well yes but mainly no IMHO. Clearly celebrities, socialites and hipsters have contributed to the almighty comeback of the Wayfarers in past couple of years, but the crux of Gladwell’s model is in ignoring the randomness of it all. What we don’t know is how many rock stars and hipsters or so called “influentials” (Gawd, this word sux ass) have worn the Wayfarers over the past years without starting a massive trend?

Interestingly enough, I was 100% certain that 1982′s Blues Brothers was the single most important event to the comeback of the Wayfarers in the 80s. Well guess what? After BB only 18,000 items were sold. It was only Tom Cruise’s 1983 Risky Business that marked the beginning of a Wayfarers phenomenon; 360,000 pairs were sold that year.

The only thing we know is that in somehow probably around 2006 other people have started to imitate these few originators. Well, a trend has to start somewhere and fact of life is that people tend to imitate famous people’s look more easily than the rest of us – this influence cannot be ignored. Probably in different places in different times around 2006-2007 more people imitated and then more pictures of celebrities popped up in fashion magazines that were quick to declare that ‘Wayfarers are back big time!” and than half of east-London wore them in 2008, which brings us to the largest fashion-HERD of the century.

Fashion trends always makes a sexy story and are great to observe the spread of ideas but it’s very problematic to apply it to other categories. I looked at Ray-Ban’s marketing while they are doing some great stuff, there is nothing original or extraordinarily brilliant that can suggest they had more than good luck in recent years. If anything, they were brilliant at riding the wave, realising that their time has come again and launched fantastic range that appeal to everyone.

It’s a bit difficult to admit but 2008-2008 glorious comeback of the Wayfarers is a complex phenomena that cannot be reduced to over-simplified marketing theories. To be fair on Gladwell his other rules stated that in order to spread, an idea or product had to be “sticky,” and appear in a fertile social context. This bit is often forgotten mainly because it’s far more difficult to create and control than to reach out to few A-listers…

Discuss.