ld become
vicious. Amongst Moslems and Orientals this conventionalization as to
dress has never been introduced. We are familiar with the fact that when
a fashion has been introduced and has become common our eye is formed to
it, and no one looks "right" or stylish who does not conform to it. We
also know that after the fashion has changed things in the discarded
fashion look dowdy and rustic. No one can resist these impressions, try
as he may. This fact, in the experience of everybody, gives us an
example of the power of current custom over the individual. While a
fashion reigns its tendency is to greater and greater extravagance in
order to produce the desired and admired effect. Then the toleration for
any questionable element in the fashion is extended and the extension is
unnoticed. If a woman of 1860, in the dress of her time, were to meet a
woman of 1906, in the dress of her time, each would be amazed at the
indecency of the dress of the other. No dress ever was more, or more
justly, denounced for ugliness, inconvenience, and indecency than the
crinoline, but all the women from 1855 to 1865, including some of the
sweetest who ever lived, wore it. No inference whatever as to their
taste or character would be justified. There never is any rational
judgment in the fashion of dress. No criticism can reach it. In a few
cases we know what actress or princess started a certain fashion, but in
the great majority of cases we do not know whence it came or who was
responsible for it. We all have to obey it. We hardly ever have any
chance to answer back. Its all-sufficient sanction is that "everybody
wears it," or wears it _so_. Evidently this is only a special
application to dress of a general usage--conventionalization.

+187. Uncivilized fashions.+ Those "good old times" of simplicity and
common sense in dress must be sought in the time anterior to waistband
and apron. All the barbarians and savages were guilty of folly,
frivolity, and self-deformation in the service of fashion. They found an
ideal somewhere which they wanted to attain, or they wanted to be
distinguished, that is, raised out of the commonplace and universal. At
one stage distinction comes from being in the fashion in a high and
marked degree. Also each one flees the distinction of being out of the
fashion, which would not draw admiration. At another stage distinction
comes from starting a new fashion. This may be done by an ornament, if
it is well selecte