The Hidden Influence Network in the Fashion Industry
Link: http://yusanlin.com/files/papers/wits14_hidden.pdf
I love shopping at Urban Outfitters, Vineyard Vines, Kate Spade, Ted Baker, UGG, and many more fashion brands. Though all these stores cater to a slightly different customer, they all carry similar styles at similar times due to the current fashion trends, but where did they see these trends? And how do they all have the same trends? Did a designer see a new look on the streets, copy it, and pass it on to other brands? Or did they all see the same silhouettes, trends, and colors during last years New York Fashion Week and get inspired by that? These are both good questions and the answer is yes to both! Trends are started everywhere, on the streets and on the runways, but one of the most important influences on trends are high-end fashion shows. This leads me to the question; who is the biggest influencer in the fashion Industry?
This article discusses how to use page rank and influence networks to determine the most important influencers in the fashion industry. They started out this experiment by building a taxonomy, “based on the words used in the collected runway reviews” (Pg. 4 Lin). Then, they used this taxonomy to compare past reviews and future reviews of fashion shows to see which brands influenced other brands most. The more articles written using the same taxonomy and the more “similar” the words used in the review were, the greater influence the original designer had on the next designer. Next, they used this data to build Full and Nearest Influence Networks. The Full Influence Networks showed all connections that eventually lead back to the original influencer. In other words, If Prada’s Spring 2016 collection was influenced by Burberrys Fall 2015 collection and Burberrys Fall 2015 collection was influenced by Vera Wang’s Spring 2014 collection, there would be a link from Prada to Burberry, Burberry to Vera Wang, and Prada to Vera Wang, even though Vera Wang’s Collection did not directly influence Prada’s. The Nearest Influence Network, in contrast, would only show links from Prada to Burberry and Burberry to Vera Wang. The article also discusses how page rank plays a part in how influential a fashion brand is. Page Rank is determined by the amount of links the online fashion site has and how often the links are clicked on. These two factors are then used to determine the most influential fashion designers in the industry based on these influence networks and page rank system.