The Loss In Fashion

Have we hit upon the right idea of Fashion? The process which has been going on ever since the world began seems to have a defect in it. When you have got a woman thoroughly civilized and well fashioned you cannot do anything more with her. And it is worth reflection what we should do, what could we spend our energies on.

We do not like to admit that fashion process has its cycles, that fashion and women, like trees and fruit, grow, ripen, and then decay. The world has always had a conceit that the globe could be made entirely fashionable, and all over the home of a society constantly growing better. In order to accomplish this we have striven to eliminate bad taste in women and in nature:

Every great city has enough of the same element. Is this an accident, or is it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on calling fashion? We are always sending out designers, models to savage or perverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to occupy and reduce to order neglected territory. This is our main business. How would it be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no more peoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring under productive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth this energy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would our fashion last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized, would not it be too weak even to ripen? We have a gay confidence that we can do something for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, which our own hands have made?

If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must it always go on by spurts and relapses, alternate fashion and bad fashion, and the bad fashion being necessary to keep us employed and growing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of fashion? Does our process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of the race? After a time do we just live, or try to live?