What We See Becomes What We Want

Most of us have seen The Devil Wears Prada and heard the monologue by Miranda Priestly explaining how Andy ended up wearing a cerulean jumper.

And she was onto something.

Fashion trends rarely appear by accident. Colours, silhouettes and styles move through a system before they eventually arrive in our wardrobes. Designers influence retailers, retailers influence consumers, and what begins as an idea can eventually become something that feels completely ordinary.

But have you ever stopped to consider how this process worked before Instagram, TikTok and influencers?

How did people discover new fashions when there was no internet? How did trends spread across countries before television? How did Australians know what was fashionable when the latest styles were being created on the other side of the world?

The answer lies in what people could see.

Royal visits, fashion magazines, mail-order catalogues, sewing patterns, Hollywood films, department store advertising and later television all acted as vehicles for fashion ideas. What people encountered shaped what they desired, and what they desired shaped what the industry produced.

What we see becomes what we want.

At the heart of fashion trends is one simple idea: fashion is not random.

What becomes fashion is shaped by a range of factors — aesthetics, practicality, and the availability of materials and resources. However, at some point, a design decision is made and a product or silhouette enters the system.

From there, it moves through layers of visibility and repeated exposure. As people see it more often, familiarity builds. That familiarity can develop into acceptance, and eventually into desire.

In this sense, fashion trends are not just created — they are transmitted.

Colonial Australia

Before the rise of mass media fashion systems, clothing in Australia was strongly shaped by its colonial relationship with Britain.

For much of the 19th century, Australia did not generate its own dominant fashion systems. Instead, it was heavily influenced by England, with styles arriving through imported garments, fashion plates, and pattern books that travelled by ship. This meant that fashion trends were not only externally sourced, but also significantly delayed by distance and transport time.

As a result, Australian dress in this period reflected British ideals of class, respectability, and social order, but adapted to local conditions, climate, and available materials. Dressmaking and tailoring were essential skills, and garments were often individually constructed rather than purchased as ready-made fashion.

While fashion was still highly significant socially, it operated through slow transmission networks rather than rapid, repeated visual exposure. This created a system where style change was gradual, fragmented, and largely dependent on imported information rather than locally generated trends.

This reliance on external and delayed fashion influence created the conditions for visual media such as cinema to become a powerful new system of fashion transmission in the early 20th century

An image of Clara Bow from the movie "It"

The Silver Screen

One of the earliest influences of fashion emerged through cinema in the 1920s.

Style icons such as Clara Bow, often referred to as the “It Girl,” graced the silent silver screen and helped define flapper-era youth fashion. Her on-screen presence popularised loose dresses, dropped waistlines, and short hairstyles that reflected a more relaxed and modern sense of movement in women’s dress.

Interestingly, the term “It Girl” became widely associated with Clara Bow after her role in the 1927 film It, where her screen presence embodied a new kind of modern, youthful femininity that audiences were eager to emulate, and from there it trickled into pop culture.

At the same time, Rudolph Valentino influenced menswear ideals through his romantic, highly tailored style and carefully constructed screen persona, shaping ideas around masculine elegance and grooming.

Within ten years, in the 1930s, cinema had moved from producing individual style icons to operating as a more structured influence system.

As Hollywood studios expanded, costume design became increasingly intentional and central to how characters were presented on screen. Clothing was no longer just part of a performer’s personal style — it was carefully designed to communicate character, status, and aspiration to the audience.

Costume designers such as Adrian at MGM played a key role in this shift, creating highly recognisable silhouettes and styling choices that defined the visual identity of major stars. Figures such as Greta Garbo became associated with tailored coats, minimal silhouettes, and refined elegance that extended beyond the screen.

At the same time, Marlene Dietrich challenged conventional ideas of women’s dress by adopting sharply tailored menswear-inspired looks both on and off screen, including suits and tuxedo styling. Her image expanded the boundaries of acceptable feminine dress and contributed to a broader acceptance of androgynous tailoring in fashion.

While early cinema shaped fashion through idealised screen identities and carefully constructed characters, the cinema experience itself was not limited to fiction.

By the 1930s and particularly during wartime, cinemas also screened newsreels before feature films. These short segments brought real-world imagery into the same viewing space as cinematic entertainment, showing audiences global events, military uniforms, and changing social conditions.

This meant that cinema became a hybrid environment — one where fashion was encountered both as aspiration through film characters, and as reality through news footage. Clothing was visible not only as glamour, but also as practicality, uniformity, and adaptation to social change.

During wartime, cinemas commonly screened newsreels before feature films, meaning audiences were regularly exposed to moving images of global events, military uniforms, and changing social conditions — all of which indirectly influenced perceptions of dress and practicality in everyday life.

An image of the first Australian Women's Weekly magazine.

The Australian Women’s Weekly and the rise of print-based fashion systems

From the 1930s onwards, print media began to play a central role in shaping fashion visibility within Australian households.

The Australian Women's Weekly became one of the most influential publications in this space, combining lifestyle content, beauty advice, and fashion imagery in a way that was accessible to a broad national audience. Unlike cinema, which was experienced in public spaces, magazines entered the home and became part of everyday domestic life.

This shift was significant because it meant fashion was no longer only encountered through occasional external exposure such as films or retail displays. Instead, it became something that could be revisited repeatedly, studied, and internalised over time.

Alongside magazines, mail-order catalogues and sewing pattern inserts expanded this system further. Fashion was no longer only something to observe or purchase — it could also be reproduced at home, meaning style circulated between media, retail, and domestic production simultaneously.

Mid-century Australia — when fashion becomes a fully layered system

Building on both public spectacle and domestic production, the mid-20th century in Australia represents a point where fashion influence operated simultaneously across multiple overlapping channels.

Public events such as the 1954 royal visit by Queen Elizabeth II reinforced ideals of formality, elegance, and national identity through highly visible ceremonial dress. These moments were widely circulated through newspapers, photography, and public gathering, meaning fashion was experienced as part of national storytelling rather than just personal style.

At the same time, everyday fashion knowledge was being distributed through print and domestic instruction systems. Sewing and dressmaking guides allowed these broader visual influences to be translated into garments made within the home, reinforcing the idea that fashion could be both observed and actively constructed.

This period also saw the continued expansion of department store retail culture, where clothing was presented as coordinated seasonal displays, further strengthening the relationship between visual presentation and consumer desire.

Alongside domestic fashion systems and national public events, international couture also began to play a more direct role in shaping Australian fashion awareness.

The work of Christian Dior, for example, represented a shift in global fashion visibility, where Paris couture was no longer only accessed through images in magazines, but increasingly experienced through exhibitions, media coverage, and international influence reaching Australian audiences directly. This introduced a new layer of fashion visibility, where global design authority was physically and visually present within the local context.

The Golden Dressmaker

Television — the compression of fashion visibility

From the late 1950s and into the 1960s, television began to consolidate many of the separate fashion visibility systems into a single domestic medium.

For the first time, moving images, advertising, entertainment, and cultural events could all be experienced within the home. This significantly reduced the gap between seeing fashion in public spaces and encountering it in everyday life.

Unlike cinema, which required physical attendance, television made fashion exposure continuous and routine. Trends were no longer encountered occasionally — they were embedded into daily viewing habits through programs, advertising breaks, and televised events.

This shift meant that fashion influence became more immediate and more repetitive, reinforcing styles through constant domestic visibility.

Alongside domestic fashion systems and national public events, international couture also began to play a more direct role in shaping Australian fashion awareness.

Television → Advertising → Acceleration of fashion

From the 1960s onwards, television increasingly became the dominant domestic medium for shaping fashion awareness in Australia. Unlike cinema or print media, television was not event-based or periodic — it was continuous, embedded into daily routines, and increasingly commercialised through advertising.

Fashion influence began to shift from editorial or aspirational exposure toward direct marketing. Clothing, beauty, and lifestyle products were no longer just shown as part of stories or curated magazine spreads — they were actively promoted through repeated advertising messages designed to link identity, desire, and consumption.

This marked a key shift in the fashion system: visibility was no longer incidental, but engineered for persuasion.

The increasing role of television advertising and branding throughout the late 20th century accelerated the pace at which fashion trends circulated. As global supply chains expanded and retail systems became more responsive to media-driven demand, fashion cycles began to shorten significantly, shifting from seasonal change to rapid turnover.

eBay and the democratisation of luxury fashion

Platforms such as eBay played a particularly significant role in this shift.

For the first time, designer fashion became accessible through peer-to-peer exchange rather than exclusively through boutiques or international travel. Items from luxury brands could circulate through second-hand markets, making garments that were once geographically and economically restricted available to a much broader audience.

A pair of designer heels, a vintage handbag, or archival pieces from international designers such as Marc Jacobs could now be purchased by Australian consumers without ever leaving home or entering a flagship store.

This changed the meaning of luxury fashion itself. Instead of being defined purely by exclusivity of access, luxury began to include circulation, resale, and reinterpretation through digital marketplaces.

The internet + social media — from access to algorithm

The rise of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s marked a major restructuring of fashion visibility. For the first time, fashion was no longer dependent on scheduled media such as magazines, television, or retail catalogues. Instead, it became searchable, global, and increasingly shaped by digital interaction.

Early online platforms and forums allowed fashion to circulate beyond traditional editorial control. Blogs and digital magazines began to decentralise fashion commentary, allowing individuals to publish, interpret, and influence style outside established fashion institutions. This marked the beginning of a shift in fashion authority away from a small number of gatekeepers and towards a more distributed network of voices.

Platforms such as eBay further transformed this system by introducing resale and circulation into mainstream fashion culture. Luxury and designer goods became accessible outside traditional retail environments, allowing garments to move through global second-hand networks. Fashion was no longer only something introduced through seasonal release — it became something that could be continuously reintroduced, recirculated, and reinterpreted.

At the same time, visual discovery platforms such as Pinterest shifted fashion visibility from passive viewing to active curation. Users no longer only consumed fashion imagery; they collected, organised, and reassembled it into personalised aesthetic identities. Fashion inspiration became structured through individual taste-making rather than purely editorial selection.

As social media platforms developed further, particularly Instagram and later TikTok, fashion visibility became increasingly algorithmic. Instead of users actively seeking out trends, content was now delivered through personalised feeds shaped by engagement patterns and predictive systems. This marked a significant shift: visibility was no longer only curated by humans or institutions, but also by automated systems that determined what was most likely to hold attention.

Alongside this increase in visibility came a parallel shift in representation. As fashion content became more global and commercially intensified, the presentation of bodies within fashion imagery also became more narrowly defined in certain mainstream spaces. Runway casting, advertising campaigns, and branded fashion content often reflected specific aesthetic ideals that were amplified through repeated digital exposure. At the same time, social media also created space for counter-narratives, where a wider range of body types, identities, and aesthetics could be represented outside traditional fashion gatekeeping structures.

This duality is important: digital fashion systems simultaneously concentrate influence through algorithms while also dispersing influence through user-generated content.

In this environment, fashion authority becomes fragmented. It is no longer located in a single place — not in designers alone, not in magazines, not in retail, and not even in individual influencers. Instead, it exists across a network of platforms, users, and systems that continuously shape what is seen, repeated, and desired.

Mobile internet, fast fashion, and the collapse of stable trends

As digital technology continued to advance, fashion visibility became not only global but mobile. With the introduction of smartphones, fashion was no longer something accessed at a fixed location or time. Instead, it became continuously available, carried in people’s pockets and integrated into everyday life.

This shift meant that fashion influence was no longer tied to sitting in front of a television, browsing a magazine, or even searching online from a computer. It became immediate, constant, and location-independent.

At the same time, the rise of ultra-fast global retail platforms further accelerated this system. Companies such as Shein introduced production and distribution models that dramatically shortened the gap between trend visibility and product availability. Styles could be seen, produced, and purchased within extremely short timeframes, often at very low cost and across international supply chains.

In this environment, fashion trends no longer operate in the same linear cycles as earlier periods. Instead of a single dominant seasonal direction, fashion has become fragmented into multiple overlapping micro-trends, aesthetic communities, and rapidly shifting style identities.

What emerges is not the absence of trends, but the loss of a single unified trend system. Individuals are now able to move between aesthetics quickly, constructing and reconstructing identity through accessible global fashion systems that are constantly updated.

Fashion becomes less about long-term adherence to a dominant style and more about fluid participation in multiple styles over short periods of time.

An image of the mobile view for Melissa Rath Millinery

Influencers, unboxing culture, and real-time fashion visibility

Alongside mobile access and fast global retail platforms, fashion visibility has also become increasingly shaped by influencer culture and real-time content creation.

Fashion is no longer only encountered through editorial systems or retail environments — it is now continuously performed through digital platforms.

Unboxing videos, try-on hauls, and styling content have become new forms of fashion communication, where the act of consumption itself is turned into visible content. In this system, fashion is not only worn, but documented, shared, and circulated as part of everyday media production.

At the same time, fashion events such as runway shows, red carpet appearances, and front-row seating have become increasingly integrated with digital media. Influencers and content creators now sit alongside traditional fashion editors and celebrities, reflecting a broader redistribution of visibility within the industry.

Fashion shows are no longer isolated industry events. They are global media moments, streamed, clipped, reposted, and commented on in real time across multiple platforms.

This creates a feedback loop where:

runway fashion is designed for visibility
visibility is amplified through influencers
and influence is measured through engagement

Closing: What we see becomes what we want

Returning to the idea introduced at the beginning, Miranda Priestly’s explanation of the cerulean jumper is often remembered as a moment about fashion hierarchy — but what it actually describes is a system of transmission.

Fashion is never isolated. It moves through layers of visibility, interpretation, repetition, and reinforcement. What begins on a runway, in a design studio, or in a cultural moment is filtered through media systems, retail systems, and now digital systems, until it eventually appears in everyday life as something familiar, desirable, and “normal.”

Across time, the mechanisms have changed, but the principle has remained consistent:

What we see becomes what we want.

However, what has changed dramatically is how we see.

From fashion plates carried across oceans to my great-grandmother at a kitchen table in rural Australia studying imported pattern books, through generations shaped by magazines, catalogues, cinema, and television, to my own experience navigating global online marketplaces and digital fashion systems, and now to my daughters curating their own fashion worlds through mobile apps, fast-moving retail platforms, and algorithmic feeds — fashion has always moved through systems of visibility that change in form, but not in function.

Each technological shift has compressed distance, accelerated repetition, and expanded access.

Today, fashion is no longer only something observed or consumed. It is performed, curated, and circulated in real time. Trends are no longer simply introduced from the top and slowly adopted from the bottom; they are assembled, remixed, and reshaped continuously across interconnected digital systems.

Influence is no longer located in a single place. It is distributed across designers, platforms, algorithms, creators, and audiences, all participating in the ongoing construction of visibility and desire.

And yet, despite all of this change, the underlying mechanism remains the same.

What we see becomes what we want.

Photo Credits

Clara Bow: https://fromthebygone.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/clara-bow-in-it-192

Australian Women's Weekly: https://australianfoodtimeline.com.au/australian-womens-weekly/

The Golden Dressmaker: From my private collection, inherited from my grandmother.

If you liked this blog post, you may like these ones:

About the Author

Melissa Rath is an Australian milliner creating unique, handcrafted hats. She shares insights on design, styling, colour theory, the history of hats and all things millinery.

Item added to your cart