People in the fashion industry do the same thing, basically, that architects and car body designers and other product designers do: they design the clothes that

People in the fashion industry do the same thing, basically, that architects and car body designers and other product designers do: they design the clothes that people wear. Apparently, people don't want to just keep wearing the same designs that were popular in 1950 or 1850 or even 10 years ago, so clothing designers create new designs. Many of them go nowhere, but some are popular are sell well. Over time, this results in fashion trends changing, which is why you can look at photographs of people in the 1980s or 2000s and see that their clothing styles are noticeably different from now. Of course, this generally seems to be more noticeable to women than men as they generally have a greater interest in being fashionable (though plenty of men do too, though probably far, far less among the crowd that frequents HN).