Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980), *Portrait of Mrs. Rufus Bush*

I’m not fashionable, but I’m interested in fashion.

I like to read about skinny jeans, white jeans, barrel leg and baggy jeans; about rich neutrals, microbuns, bixies and man brooches. I like to consider bold pops, polka dots and pointelle fabric; French tuck collars, scelts and tomato red. I like to discover that they’re channelling Marie Antoinette and Diane Keaton, JFK Jnr and Carolyn Bessette; to learn that sandwich dressing is where you contrast a middle layer between two matching elements.

A while ago, I read in The Times (Rhys Blakely, 17 March 2026) that researchers have found evidence to substantiate the long-held fashion principle that trends follow a cycle of approximately two decades.

A study by mathematicians at Northwestern University in the United States examined nearly 160 years’ worth of women’s clothing records, scrutinizing databases of tens of thousands of garments, design drawings and archive images. In particular, it focused on the rise and fall of hemlines.

Employing a spectral analysis technique, the academics discovered repeating wave patterns of style, recurring on a timescale of roughly 20 years. For example, the shorter dresses of 1920s flappers gave way to longer hems in the 1930s, only for hems to rise again in the 1940s, and again in the 1960s with the miniskirt.

According to the research, designers’ and consumers’ desire to stand out – a little, but not too much - from popular conventions, creates a ‘cultural pendulum.’

‘Over time, this constant push to be different from the recent past causes styles to swing back and forth. The system intrinsically wants to oscillate, and we see those cycles in the data.’
Daniel Abrams, professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics, Northwestern University

We tend to regard the world of brand and communication planning as one of steady progress; of evolutionary learning; of gradual ascent towards superior practices and techniques.

But what if strategy is also subject to fashion? What if the 20-year-rule applies to planning?

I seem to recall that, two decades or so ago, deep in the mists of time, we were concerned with user values and usage occasions; with KPIs, USPs and SWOT analyses; with brand personification, cognitive dissonance and calls-to-action. There was some weird stuff about Greek gods. And we created temples, lighthouses, pyramids and stadia; eggs and onions; task-based briefs, chords, conveyer belts and yin yang charts. (Source: Mintel)

Are some of these approaches relevant now? Could they be revived and rebooted? Could they be the mullet of modern strategy, returning to centre stage in a blaze of glory? Or are they destined to remain forever out in the cold, like pleather chaps and platform trainers; sweatbands, leg warmers and fascinators?

'She's the face on the radio.
She's the body on the morning show.
She's there shaking it out on the scene.
She's the colour of a magazine.
And she's in fashion.
She's in fashion.
She's employed where the sun don't set.
And she's the shape of a cigarette.
And she's the shake of a tambourine.
And she's the colour of a magazine.
And she's in fashion
And she's in fashion.’
Suede, ‘She’s in Fashion’ (B L Anderson, N J Codling)

No. 572

‘O sleep,why dost thou leave me?
Why thy visionary joys remove?
O sleep again deceive me,
To my arms restore my wand’ring love’

I recently attended a concert in which these words of Congreve were sung in a beautiful Handel aria. I’m sure we can all relate to the sentiment: sleep is a place of joyful deceptions and re-found loves; it’s a place for escaping, forgetting, recovering, refocusing. However harsh the work environment, however stressful the unrelenting day, I have always been sustained by the promise of sleep, its welcoming embrace, its warm repose. In fact I have a singular talent for napping at will and I have inherited from my mother the habit of the Sunday afternoon kip. I like to drift off on the sofa, newspaper on my lap, to the sound of children’s chatter and roller bags from the pavement outside.

I have long felt that sleep is an area of untapped opportunity for brands. We spend a third of our lives sleeping, but we’re increasingly concerned by our ability to get enough of it, at the right quality. One can’t help but be underwhelmed by the plethora of scented candles, quack remedies and orthopaedic pillows that currently constitute the ‘sleep sector’. Can’t we do better than this? Surely space is not the final frontier; it’s sleep.

When, many years ago, BBH first embarked on our efforts to develop brand ideas that could cross borders, we had to overcome the argument that cultural difference abhorred generalisation. We observed that, whilst all markets are indeed diverse and varied, there are often strong consistencies around aspiration, belief and hope: we are united in dreams, but divided by reality. It’s a creative tension that I continue to find useful.

This is not to say that my relationship with sleep and dreams has always been positive. As a child I was cursed by a recurrent nightmare : my father, padded up, in cricket whites, being chased down the stairs by a crocodile. Not pleasant perhaps, but at least it was interesting.

When I was a young researcher there were guys who put respondents to sleep, hypnotised them in order to probe the deeper, darker unspoken truths of brands. I confess I felt at the time that this was all somewhat daft. Nonetheless I can’t help but admire the intent.

I sometimes wonder if the ‘always on’ digital age is depriving brands of the opportunity to pause and ponder, recover and refocus. I’m concerned that nowadays we fail to find the time and space for our brands to sleep and dream. As we reduce everything to rational reckoners, KPIs and capabilities, are we cultivating brands without conflict or contradiction, brands without personality or human frailty? Are we creating an Age of the Anodyne? Pity the insomniac brand, cursed to roam the earth in the endless waking sunshine of unforgiving rationality.

It seems reasonable to suggest that, whilst brands today should naturally seek to deliver immediacy and reciprocity, utility and individuality, they should also find room to rest, relax and restore; to dream the illogical and impossible; to yearn for lost loves and found hopes.

‘Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
I’m tired and I
I want to go to bed…’

Asleep, Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr

First published: BBH Labs: 02/08/2011

No. 9

Strategic Fashion: Could the 20-Year-Rule Apply to Brand and Communication Planning?

To Sleep, To Dream

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