Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
How fashion cycles
A style marks a difference, spreads until the difference is gone, and then must change.
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From the opening
A fashion cycle is the social career of a style, from first visible use, through wider adoption, to being marked as dated, and sometimes back as a quotation of itself. The engine is not a property of cloth, and it is the use of clothing to signal difference and then membership. The opening covers difference first, then membership, simmel's trickle and the reverse, and revival cites a period.
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Inside
- Difference first, then membership
- Simmel's trickle and the reverse
- Revival cites a period
- Uniforms and climate are other forces
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- Simmel's account of fashion and social distinction
- Trickle-down and trickle-up paths of stylistic adoption