ABSTRACT
While people have a great deal of choice in clothing and are free to purchase anything they want, in fact they are often swept up and carried along in certain ways — by fads and crazes. That's what "fashion" is all about. Fashion is, after all, a form of collective behavior and the choices that people often make frequently are decisions to go along with millions of other people in wearing some garment or adopting some style of dress that's "hot". The school uniforms perform one of the more important functions of fashion — enabling people to not distinguish between groups and social classes. Orrin E. Klapp makes an interesting point about fashion in his book Collective Search for Identity. "Fashion", he says, "is most important for those who have something to prove about themselves — especially when they cannot prove it by other means". He then makes some distinctions which are useful —between front, fad, and pose.
