Intergenerational Fashion Influences: Mother/Daughter Relationships and Fashion Involvement, Fashion Leadership, Opinion Leadership and Information Seeking from One Another

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between mother and daughter pairs with respect to fashion influence. Because no prior research has explored fashion influences between late adolescent/early adult women and their mothers, this population was selected. A mixed method approach was used to investigate the following research questions: •How do mothers of late adolescent/early adult women influence their daughters' fashion styles? •How do late adolescent/early adult daughters influence their mothers' fashion styles? •What is the relationship between: Fashion Leadership, Fashion Involvement, Opinion Leadership and Opinion Seeking with respect to intergenerational style influences of mother/daughter pairs?

Mothers and daughters completed surveys that generated data to measure Fashion Involvement (Tigert, Ring, & King, 1976), Fashion Leadership (Goldsmith, Freiden, & Kilsheimer, 1993), and Opinion Leadership and Information Seeking (Reynolds & Darden, 1971) with modified questions to explore mother/daughter influences in the context of fashion. In addition, subjects provided qualitative data for exploratory analysis.

Results showed that mothers and daughters agreed on the level of fashion influence that mothers have on daughters, but daughters perceived that they had more fashion influence on mothers than mothers reported. Additionally, levels of Fashion Involvement, Fashion Leadership, and Opinion Leadership were statistically significantly different between mothers and daughters, with daughters possessing higher levels of each. Mothers and daughters possessed similar levels of Information Seeking though qualitative analysis revealed that the type of information sought from one another was different. Mothers tended to seek style information from their daughters whereas daughters looked to their mothers for advice on price, fit, and appropriateness of clothing for specific events. This study supports the notion that roles of mothers and daughters transform as daughters move through late adolescence/early adulthood with respect to influence in fashion style, though mothers retain a nurturing role while daughters emerge as opinion leaders.