ABSTRACT
Fashion is merely a product of social demands, even though the individual object which it creates or recreates may represent a more or less individual need. Social forms, apparel, aesthetic judgment, the whole style of human expression, are constantly transformed by fashion, in such a way, however, that fashion – i.e., the latest fashion – in all these things affects only the upper classes. The fact that fashion expresses and at the same time emphasizes the tendency towards equalization and individualization, and the desire for imitation and conspicuousness, perhaps explains why it is that women, broadly speaking, are its staunchest adherents. The distinctiveness which in tile early stages of a set fashion assures for it a certain distribution is destroyed as the fashion spreads, and as this element wanes, the fashion also is bound to die. Paris modes are frequently created with the sole intention of setting a fashion elsewhere.
