Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Fashion and the process of change

Fashion, by definition, changes continuously. The changes may progress more quickly than in most other fields of human activity. For some, modern fast-paced changes in fashion embody many of the negative aspects of capitalism: it results in waste and encourages people qua consumers to buy things unreasonably. Others, especially young people, enjoy the diversity that changing fashion can apparently offer, seeing the constant change as a way to satisfy their wish to experience "new" and "interesting" things. Note too that fashion can change to enforce regularity, as in the case where so-called Mao suits became the national uniform of mainland China.