THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ROLE OF FASHION. 



By Pierre Clerget, 

 Director of the High School of Commerce, Lyon, France. 



Fashion is a social custom, transmitted by imitation or by tradition. 

 It is a form of luxury, luxury in ornamentation. Voltaire says : 



There is a fickle, teasing goddess 



Fantastic in her tastes, playful in adornment, 



Who at every season seems to flee, return, and rise again. 



Proteus was her father, her name is Fashion. 



Many writers have sounded the caprices of fashion, its frequent 

 coming, its suddennness. It is changeable,^ unreliable, frivolous ; the 

 most careful calculations are often brushed aside for the most trifling 

 causes. Another characteristic is its universal following. Domineer- 

 ing, it reigns supreme over all classes of society. Wliile this " de- 

 mocracy of fashion " is quite recent, yet the taste for finery is as old 

 as the world. 



An English archeologist, Mr. Evans, found in the Mycenaean 

 palace of Knossos in Crete some frescoes painted 1,400 j^^ears 

 before our era, showing ladies of the court clothed in resplend- 

 ent garments, with enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves held to the neck 

 by a narrow ribbon; their floimced skirts, ornamented with em- 

 broidered bands, are expanded behind by enormous bustles. 



Writings and monuments tell us that under the Empire changes 

 of fashion and peculiarity in costumes were customary at Rome. 

 During the Middle Ages, an author of the twelfth century wrote: 

 " France, whose humor varies continuously, ought to have some 

 garments which would proclaim her instability." In the fifteenth 

 century, Robert Gaguin reproached Parisians " for always being 

 eager for novelties and unable to retain the same style of clothing 

 for 10 successive years." ^ 



1 Translated by permission from the Revue ficonomique Internationale, Brussels, vol. 2, 

 No. 1, Apr. 15-20, 1913. 



- " One fashion has hardly brushed aside another when it is abolished by a new one 

 and this in turn gives way to one which follows, but this one will not be the last."— 

 r^a Brug^re. " The new style of dressing makes the older fashion out of date, so forcefully 

 and with such general agreement that it might be called a kind of mania which tui'ns the 

 senses round." — Montaigne. 



•■' Cited by L. Bourdeau, Histoire de rhabillemeut ot de la parure. 8° F. Alcan, 190 J, 

 p. 197. 



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