Elites lost a sustained battle to mark status through dress

Evidence

Fashion, in and of itself, as a form of social life, is a preeminent case of this correlation. The adornment and accentuation that it lends to the personality is accorded to it only as the member of a class that is collectively distinguishing itself from other classes by adopting the new fashion. (As soon as a fashion has diffused into the other classes, it is abandoned and replaced with another.) The adoption of a fashion represents an internal leveling of the class and its self-exaltation above all other classes. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 618 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A rising middle class multiplied the appropriation of others’ dress styles.; Monarchy collapsed once its style no longer signified as royal costume — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 704; Preindustrial city manners were category-bound and sanctioned by elites (+2 more)

Related

• Fashion is abandoned by a class once it diffuses to other classes (similarity 0.87)
• A rising middle class multiplied the appropriation of others’ dress styles. (similarity 0.83)
• The emergent middle class broke the old dress order by appropriating elite styles (similarity 0.82)
• Fashion substitutes for class and profession as a source of individual differentiation. (similarity 0.80)
• Emancipated women signal status through indifference to fashion. (similarity 0.80)
• Appropriating elite dress let commoners claim elite social rights (similarity 0.79)
• Fashion requires both the impulse to union and to isolation (similarity 0.79)
• Merchant bourgeois wealth, not the poor, first eroded aristocratic dress codes. (similarity 0.78)
• Rising merchant elites embraced sumptuary law rather than opposing status distinctions (similarity 0.78)
• Fashion diffusion works through upper-class innovation followed by lower-class imitation and upper-class retreat (similarity 0.78)
• Urban elites used dress materials to signal rank over inferiors (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Merchant bourgeois wealth, not the poor, first eroded aristocratic dress codes. #expands (0.60)
• Preindustrial city manners were category-bound and sanctioned by elites #corroborates (0.50)
• Fashion is abandoned by a class once it diffuses to other classes #expands (0.50) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 618
• Monarchy collapsed once its style no longer signified as royal costume #qualifies (0.40) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 704
• A rising middle class multiplied the appropriation of others’ dress styles. #expands (0.30)