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What makes people conform or stay different? Conformity helps you to belong and to give you esteem because we naturally want the friendship and approval of others. Nowadays there are millions of places and ways to choose your fashions but certain trends or places to shop are more popular than others. Each with over 200 stores in malls across the country Hollister, Forever 21, and Hot Topic are popular stores that primarily target specific youth groups.

X. secret matte nail trend                                  X. independent design inspired by roads

Studies have shown that conformity is linked with obedience, such as the Milgram experiment where people off the street were persuaded by social influence to obey what was believed to be life threatening orders. So chain stores at the mall base their marketing on what the majority of their target audience believes is in. This industry tries to infect public minds by marketing the popular trends and the infected people go about by spreading it to their friends, and therefore manifesting the trend.

However, there are still thrift stores that help charity, alternative fashions, and local designers that most people don’t know about because they have a narrower mean of self-promotion. Some local artists and designers start out as street vendors on Telegraph Avenue between Oakland and Berkeley to sell to the diverse groups of college students, tourists, artists, street punks, eccentrics, and homeless people that hang out there. Telegraph Avenue is also home to a plethora of tattoo and piercing shops with wide selections of unique body jewelry for the extroverted individual who isn’t afraid of needles.

The Rock Paper Scissors collective (RPS) in Oakland, is a non-profit volunteer run store for mainly high school youth which also promotes creativity. You can buy artwork and clothes from local artists and designers or take sewing and art classes there. It is also possible to sell your own artwork or designs at RPS.

There are many ways to be unique but most people continue to conform to mainstream fashions. Obeying trends generated by clothing corporations is what people are doing now but people should have a choice to not conform.

X. reconstructed top from tshirt                        X. view of Telegraph Ave