Op – art fashion and the product life cycle
All products possess ‘life cycles.’ A product 's life cycle, abbreviated PLC, consists of a series of stages, beginning with its introduction to the market and ending with its decline and eventual withdrawal from the market. As a product progresses through its life cycle, its sales and profitability change as it faces changing environmental pressures. Knowledge of the product’s life cycle can provide valuable insights into ways the product can be managed to enhance sales and profitability.
Products tend to go through different stages, each stage being affected by different competitive conditions. These stages require different marketing strategies at different times if sales and profits are to be efficiently realized. The length of a product’s life cycle is in no way a fixed period of time. It can last from weeks to years, depending on the type of product. In most texts, the discussion of the product life cycle portrays the sales history of a typical product as following an shaped curve. The curve is divided into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
I would like to use op-art fashioning 1960s to introduce the product life cycle. As Op Art and the artists at the movement’s forefront gained recognition; the youth culture explosion of the sixties was gaining momentum. Mod bands such as The Who crossed over to the U.S. and everyone wanted a piece of The London Look. The mod style, which was already waning in the U.K., reached the other side of the Atlantic at around the same time as the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye in New York, which showcased the work of Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely. Suddenly Op Art patterns started appearing on everything from clothes to advertisements, stationery, furnishing fabrics and that useful garment peculiar to the 1960s: the paper dress.
This would be the “product development” stage of the fashion industry and the “introduction stage” of the