About fashion

In the Court, with its finely structured hierarchy, the forces of fashion as described by such theorists as Georg Simmel, Herbert Spencer and the economist Thorstein Veblen, arose from competitiveness and the need to maintain a rigid class structure. 'Fashion is basically an emulation of prestige groups,' claims Simmel or, as William Hazlitt put it, ' Gentility fleeing from vulgarity.' Court etiquette could be decidedly contradictory and you had to know the rules-to imitate or not to imitate, that was the question. When Luis XIV shaved off his moustache in 1680, it was expected that those gentlemen at Court, who wore moustaches, would follow the King's lead. Similarly, when Marie Antoinette lost her hair after her confinement,