Are consumer preferences for fashions affected by whether styles are presented in photographs or drawings? Does mode of presentation of stimuli influence responses obtained in research? These were questions addressed in this experiment. Stimuli were photographs of five styles of evening wear and drawings of the same styles. Female university students responded to each stimulus on 19 pairs of polar adjectives; preferences were expressed in full forced‐choice paired comparisons. Mode of presentation made no difference in preferences for the five styles. Responses to specific styles differed between photographs and drawings for five of the 19 pairs of polar adjectives, but the quantitative effect of mode of presentation was very small. Order of preference for the styles was most closely linked with the word pairs dated‐current and ugly‐beautiful.