Slaves to fashion

If you absolutely must have those oversized sunnies, if you've gone and got your Victoria Beckham bob or if you're considering naming your baby Supernova Strawberry Lala - take heart.

Your behaviour may be shallow, slavish and unoriginal but it's perfectly normal, according to a university study. And it may even have an evolutionary basis.

Researchers at the University of Durham in the north of England studied the popularity of baby names, music and even dog breeds in an attempt to gain an insight into what drives fashions and trends in popular culture. Not surprisingly, they found that trends are driven by a small number of "innovators", usually celebrities, and followed by the majority.

"Innovators are the cool ones who 'pump' new fashions into our world,'" says researcher Dr Alex Bentley, a lecturer in anthropology. The research, published in the latest journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, also found that trends change at a steady and predictable rate. But the copying is random, which means it's impossible to predict exactly which trend will become flavour of the day. The research is good news for viral marketers, Bentley says, but the trick is identifying the innovators amongst the copy cats. Bill von Hippel, a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland, says the study backs previous research on "lead users", a term coined in the 1980s by his father, Professor Eric von Hippel. "A lead user in fashion would be a celebrity of some sort and a lead user in skiing would be the world's best," he says.

"New jeans may come out of Calvin Klein but they're just as likely to come out of movie stars and people that we like to emulate.

"Once they do something, we see them a lot and because we really like them, we're much more predisposed to think that's cool than if we see a hobo wearing the same thing.

"Celebrities are natural leaders in (the fashion) domain, scientists and politicians are the leaders in (the ideas) domain. Every domain has its own lead users.''

Von Hippel says our innate tendency to copy and imitate is probably rooted in the way we learn. "I'm not sure why it's evolved but in all probability imitation is how we learn. We do this as children and we do it as adults," he says.

But as much as we like to follow trends set by our idols, they don't always catch on immediately, von Hippel says. "When you first hear a new song or see a new fashion you typically don't like it at first ... although we're interested in new things we don't like them nearly as much as once we get to know them a little bit.

``There are evolutionary reasons for that, because if something becomes familiar it means it didn't kill you the first time.'' And while we're busy running around copying the celebrities, the celebrities themselves aren't immune from imitation. "Celebrities also jump on the bandwagon," he says - and even then there are the innovators and the imitators.

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie can apparently do no wrong by building her "rainbow family" of assorted international orphans. But when Madonna imitated Jolie by adopting her own African orphan, the public was much less tolerant.

Celebrities also show themselves to be herd animals when it comes to causes, whether it's HIV/AIDS, climate change or ending Third World poverty.

Often, the explanation doesn't need a university study.

"You just look like you're clueless and left out if you aren't at some level aware of and doing similar to what the rest of them are doing," von Hippel says.