I named an entire blog after the idea that fashion trickles up, so I think it’s only fair that I give the other side its moment. Twenty years after Miranda Priestly delivered the cerulean speech, I’m finally ready to admit it: sometimes she’s right. Sometimes a trend really does start at the very top, with a queen, a couturier or a first lady, and slowly makes its way down to the rest of us, one knockoff at a time.
As you may have guessed this is called trickle-down theory, and it goes all the way back to 1904, when sociologist Georg Simmel wrote about fashion as a kind of never-ending game of tag between the classes. The upper class wears something to set themselves apart, everyone below them copies it, and once the copies are everywhere, the upper class drops it and moves on to something new. Then the whole cycle starts over again.
So in honor of Miranda, here are some of the biggest trends that really did come from the top.
The White Wedding Dress (1840)
Before 1840, brides didn’t really wear white. Most women got married in their best dress, in whatever color they had, because they planned on wearing it again, and colors like red, blue and yellow were all common. White was impractical, it stained easily, and most women couldn’t afford a dress they would only wear once.
Then on February 10, 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in a white silk satin gown trimmed with Honiton lace. She technically wasn’t the first royal to wear white, but she was the one everyone was watching, and illustrations of her dress were published in newspapers. Wealthy brides copied her first, and over the next century the trend slowly worked its way down through every class until it became “tradition.”
Which is kind of funny when you think about it, because the whole reason white became a status symbol in the first place was that you couldn’t wear it again. Wearing white said you could afford a dress for just one day, and now there’s an entire industry built around that one day.
The Little Black Dress (1926)
In October 1926, American Vogue published a sketch of a simple, calf-length black dress by Coco Chanel and called it “Chanel’s Ford,” comparing it to Henry Ford’s Model T, the car that was simple, affordable and famously came in black. Vogue predicted it would become a sort of uniform for women of taste, which ended up obviously being correct, even all this time later (Fun fact: the little black dress officially turned 100 this year which was also my birthday!)
But here’s the part most people don’t know. The 1926 dress wasn’t actually Chanel’s first little black dress. Back in 1912 and 1913, years before she was a household name, Chanel was still mostly known for making hats, and she made a black velvet dress with a white collar for her friend, the actress Suzanne Orlandi. It took more than a decade for the rest of the world to catch up, and by the time Vogue called it “Chanel’s Ford,” she had already launched Chanel No. 5 and become one of the most famous designers in Paris. Which is kind of a funny twist for a trickle-down story, because one of the biggest trends to ever come from the top actually started with a hat maker who wasn’t at the top yet.
What I love about this one is that Chanel basically designed a luxury dress to be copied. Back then, black was mostly worn for mourning, and women’s fashion was all corsets, lace and embellishment. The story goes that designer Paul Poiret once asked her who she was in mourning for, and she answered, “For you, Monsieur.” Now there’s a little black dress at every single price point, from couture to fast fashion, and all of them trace back to Chanel.
Dior’s New Look (1947)
Fast forward to February 12, 1947. World War II had just ended, fabric was still being rationed, and women had spent years in boxy, practical clothes. Then Christian Dior showed his very first collection, with tiny cinched waists, padded hips and huge, full skirts, and Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow told him his dresses had “such a new look.”
Not everyone was thrilled, though. A single day dress could take around 15 meters of fabric and an evening gown even more, so it was probably kind of infuriating to see any “new looks” from designers while having to patch the fifth hole on your worn down sweater. In the US, women even formed protest groups like the Little Below the Knee Club against the longer hemlines. Coco Chanel even reportedly said Dior didn’t dress women, he upholstered them (she was definitely throwing shade).
But it didn’t matter. Within a few years, the cinched waist and full skirt had been copied everywhere and became the silhouette of the entire 1950s. Basically, if you picture a ’50s housewife in a full skirt, you’re picturing a watered-down Dior.
Jackie Kennedy’s Pillbox Hat (1961)
On January 20, 1961, Jackie Kennedy showed up to her husband’s inauguration in an Oleg Cassini coat and a small, domed pillbox hat designed by Halston, who at the time was the in-house milliner at Bergdorf Goodman. While a lot of the other women there were bundled up in heavy fur, she looked completely different, and the whole country noticed.
But what makes this story worth telling is the hat she was wearing was a little too small for her, and when a gust of wind almost knocked it off, Jackie grabbed it and accidentally put a dent in the top. Halston later told Vogue that the copycat hat makers on Seventh Avenue reproduced it by the thousands, so accurately that every single one had a dent in it. I think this is actually trickle-down fashion in its purest form, because people weren’t just copying the hat, they were copying her, she was known for her style and class. So if Jackie wears a hat with a dent on the top then they all had to have dents on their top of their hats too.
The Kate Middleton Effect (2010)
Similarly to the First Lady, Kate Middleton is also a great example of trickle-down theory at work. On November 16, 2010, Kate Middleton announced her engagement to Prince William in a sapphire blue silk jersey wrap dress from the British label Issa, and it sold out almost immediately. That moment became the start of what everyone now calls the “Kate effect,” where pretty much anything she wears sells out within hours.
But this one has a twist. Issa was a small label, and it couldn’t keep up with that kind of sudden demand. Its founder, Daniella Helayel, has talked about how overwhelming it was, and she eventually left the brand she had spent years building. So trickle-down can make a brand famous overnight, but it only really works out if they can handle the sudden influx of insatiable consumers.
The Birkin and the “Wirkin” (2024)
And then there’s the Birkin. Hermès’ Birkin bag is about as top-of-the-top as luxuryfashion gets, it costs anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you famously can’t just walk in and buy one. So of course, in December 2024, TikTok found a Birkin-looking leather bag on Walmart’s website for around $78, and the internet nicknamed it the “Wirkin.” It sold out almost right away, resale prices jumped, and the listing eventually disappeared from Walmart’s site.
The funniest part is that the Wirkin ended up copying a lot more than just the shape. It copied the scarcity too. People were hunting down a $78 Walmart bag the same way people hunt down a Birkin, which really kind of shows how desperate some people can be for things to actually trickle down.
My Final Thoughts
Simmel described the idea of trends trickling down as a cycle that used to take years. Victoria’s white dress took decades to reach everyone. Jackie’s hat needed an army of copycat hat makers on Seventh Avenue. The Wirkin just needed a few viral TikToks. Now luxury trends are copied and sold on TikTok shop and Walmart, with merchants on Canel St. even innovating and selling omnichannel.
But the thing is, even Simmel noticed that a lot of fashion actually starts out at the margins, and only gets legitimized once the upper class adopts it and passes it back down. So trickle-down and trickle-up aren’t really rivals. Most of the time, they’re the same trend, just caught at different points in the loop. Which is something that kind of blew my mind when I really thought about it, because honestly, I am guilty of falling into absolutist thinking sometimes and that was true for this blog up until pretty recently.
So fine, Miranda, you were right. Sometimes the sweater really does start on the runway. But as the dent in Jackie’s hat proves, once a trend starts trickling down, the people at the top don’t get to decide what it turns into. The rest of us do.
Sources
- JASSS, review of Georg Simmel’s “Fashion” (1904)
- Britannica, “Why Do Brides Wear White?”
- Smithsonian Magazine, “Why Coco Chanel Created the Little Black Dress”
- Mass Observation, “What was the big fashion controversy of 1947?”
- CNN, “Remember when Jackie Kennedy wore that pillbox hat?”
- HELLO!, “How ‘The Kate Effect’ may have caused the collapse of fashion label Issa”
- CBC, “Why Walmart’s $80 Birkin bag dupe, dubbed the ‘Wirkin’, has sparked so much controversy”
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