Georg Simmel

I was sitting with my former school mate Christian Joppke in New York's Balthazar. He is a renowned sociologist specialized on immigration by now and we are musing over immigration and fashion. I had to ask him about his take on immigration, he lapidary uttered: “Controlled Laissez Fair”. I was asking him if there are in his field relevant writings about fashion and he shot Georg Simmel. “Mode” is probably the only true attempt at a general theory of fashion and although this paper is over a century old (it was published in 1895), it is still an exciting read and feels fairly relevant today:

The very character of fashion demands that it should be exercised at one time only by a portion of the given group, the great majority being merely on the road to adopting it. As soon as an example has been universally adopted, that is, as soon as anything that was originally done only by a few has really come to he practiced by all - as is the case in certain portions of our apparel and in various forms of social conduct-we no longer speak of fashion. As fashion spreads, it gradually goes to its doom. 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. By reason of this peculiar play between the tendency towards universal acceptation and the destruction of its very purpose to which this general adoption leads, fashion includes a peculiar attraction of limitation,the attraction of a simultaneous beginning and end, the charm of novelty coupled to that of transitoriness.