ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the nature of fashion, fad, and craze, with certain psychological features of these, and also with the social functions of fashion change. Fashions formerly spread and changed slowly, by personal contact, but today they spread and change quickly, by our modern means of rapid communication and transportation. A psychology of fashion explains the curious modern habit of looking for the novel, the exciting, and the different, in dress, decoration, speech, and manner. The influence of fashion on behaviour and attitude is such as to make almost anything, once accepted, seem appropriate or beautiful, no matter how hideous it may appear when not in vogue. The deeper motives of fashion change are the desires to combine conformity with individuality in new ways, to find symbols of difference and the prestige. In our Christian society, the dominant churches have made numerous efforts to control the direction of fashion, especially of fashion in things considered sacred or taboo.
