. This is good as far as it
goes, but it is negative only. Pretty much all that this consideration
warrants us in saying is that the norm of conspicuous waste exercises a
controlling surveillance in all matters of dress, so that any change in
the fashions must conspicuous waste exercises a controlling surveillance
in all matters of dress, so that any change in the fashions must conform
to the requirement of wastefulness; it leaves unanswered the question
as to the motive for making and accepting a change in the prevailing
styles, and it also fails to explain why conformity to a given style at
a given time is so imperatively necessary as we know it to be.

For a creative principle, capable of serving as motive to invention
and innovation in fashions, we shall have to go back to the primitive,
non-economic motive with which apparel originated--the motive of
adornment. Without going into an extended discussion of how and why this
motive asserts itself under the guidance of the law of expensiveness, it
may be stated broadly that each successive innovation in the fashions is
an effort to reach some form of display which shall be more acceptable
to our sense of form and color or of effectiveness, than that which it
displaces. The changing styles are the expression of a restless search
for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but
as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of
conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is
somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful,
or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it
must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.

It would seem at first sight that the result of such an unremitting
struggle to attain the beautiful in dress should be a gradual approach
to artistic perfection. We might naturally expect that the fashions
should show a well-marked trend in the direction of some one or more
types of apparel eminently becoming to the human form; and we might even
feel that ge have substantial ground for the hope that today, after
all the ingenuity and effort which have been spent on dress these many
years, the fashions should have achieved a relative perfection and
a relative stability, closely approximating to a permanently tenable
artistic ideal. But such is not the case. It would be very hazardous
indeed to assert that the styles of today are intrinsicall