Ugh, not another Ugg-ly fashion trend!
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv26n4/v26n4-2.pdf
Love them or hate them, they are absolutely everywhere. The first time I saw a pair of Uggs years ago, they were on my sister’s feet, and I thought, “Ugg, it’s a name play on ugly, right?” My initial repulse aside, I knew right then that I would be seeing much, much more of Uggs. How could I know such a thing? You see, I was an unbeliever in the eighties when my sister was sporting lycra miniskirts and crimping her hair. I thought she’d completely lost it, and I was shaking my head right along with my mother when sis traipsed out the door every morning to get on the bus for school. Then, of course, it wasn’t long and I saw more and more people dressing just like her. I proverbially scratched my head in awe at her ability to sway so many people into dressing just like her.
I still hadn’t figured out the mystery by the early nineties when my sister begged my mom for a flannel shirt and stopped bathing. Yet again, everyone started donning flannel and stopped washing their hair in the months that followed.
By the time I saw Uggs on her feet, I fully understood what I was witnessing. The girl that had obsessively sat in front of the television watching MTV during the 80’s and 90’s was now obsessively reading fashion and entertainment magazines. She was essentially gathering intel from the “experts” on how she should dress and do her hair. My sister was just one part of an information cascade.
An information cascade occurs when people start to make decisions, not based on their own information, but rather, based on the actions of others. As my sister proved adeptly, information cascades can perpetuate decades of bad decisions from a fashion standpoint. A fashion maven of her time, my sis refuses to show anyone pictures from her lycra phase and still marvels at her judgment to participate in the grunge decade, saying “for the love of all things holy, what was I thinking?” She shouldn’t be too hard on herself though, she was just following the herd of other fashion mavens following similarly misleading signals.
Call me Kreskin, but I anticipate similar sentiments in the not-so-distant future regarding the smelly Uggs in her foyer; the same Uggs that have given her flat feet and prompted the purchase of orthotics. Of course, by then, she will be showing off a new over-priced piece of clothing that may or may not ruin her hair like crimping, attract bugs like not bathing, or flatten her arches like Uggs. If Hollywood or the music industry ordains an item as worthy, my sister will faithfully play her part in furthering the information cascade.