ECONOMIC ROLE OP FASHION — CLEEGET. 761 



solely in objects to which it offers itself, for the estimates are not 

 elastic — an increase in one article leads to retrenchment in another, 

 and the demand is merely changed from one industi'y to another. 

 Thus enormous fluctuations are shown each year in the silk indus- 

 tries, on which the uncertainties of fashion are most particularly 

 centered.^ Ribbon is most affected, being much used, both on hats 

 and clothes. It loses first one fashion, then another, and the evolution 

 is tending rapidly toward the cheapest grades used so much for orna- 

 ments and in the thousand little gewgaws of women. The situation 

 in dress goods is hardly any brighter, following the alnage law, 

 showing from this that the close-fitting costume continues to be the 

 style. " Praised by some, condemned by others," as the Figaro says, 

 this fashion will leave in the history of textile industries the souvenir 

 of an ill-omened influence. The quantity of material needed to make 

 a costume has been reduced one-half or two-thirds, and, besides, it 

 does away with undergarments and linings, which for many years 

 represented a very heavy employment of tissues of plain silk. The 

 inspector of silks at Lyons showed a registration of 7,590,445 kilo- 

 grams of silk in 1911, as compared with 8,344,566 in 1910, a difference 

 of 9.03 per cent. The two inspectors at Milan show stiU greater 

 decreases of 15.60 and 9.68 per cent, respectively. An analogous 

 reduction took place in the woolen goods industries. The French 

 Chamber of Commerce of Montevideo complained last year of the 

 effect of measurement inspection on the exportation of woolens. All 

 the related industries of spinners and weavers were affected in the 

 same degree, and the dyers, dressers, and stampers. 



As Mons. Maurice Deslandres has ingeniously expressed it, fashion 

 not only displaces the products of one industry by those of another, 

 but also impedes the latter industry by demanding quick changes in 

 machinery; retards it until the last moment by some extensive 

 changes in the work, and the trend is steadily toward low prices and 

 inferior qualities which are not durable. The result is to raise the 

 net cost by requiring the manufacturer to make earlier settlement for 

 apparatus, and necessitating expenses for the setting up of new 

 models.^ 



From the commercial standpoint there is a tendencj^ to an increase 

 in prices because of manufacturers stocks unsold, and the hesitation 

 of jobbers to lay up large supplies. The relations with customers are 

 no longer easy, the latter delay their orders, are undecided about their 



1 It is Interesting to compare the fluctuations of ttie silk Industry (as capricious as 

 those of agricultural productions) with the regularity of other industrial products in- 

 fluenced only by periodical crises, cf. the chart in our " Manuel d'6conomle commerciale." 

 A. Colin, Paris. 



2 Maurice Deslandres. La mode, ses consequences 6conomlques et socialee. Bulletlo 

 des ligues sociales d'acheteurs, vol. 1, 1912, pp. 25-37. 



