FASHION, conventional usage in the matter of certain details of life, especially the changes and modifications of costume in civilized na tions; mode or style in dress. • Such variations of costume were unknown to most nations of the ancient world and among the Romans only influenced the accessories of the toilet. The unchanging East is as unchanging in its dress as in everything else and the fashions to which savage tribes uncompromisingly adhere remain unaltered for long periods. In some remote districts of European countries peasants still dress in the costume brought two or three hundred years ago by the local nobility from court and the smock-frock of the English agri cultural laborer is a relic of Saxon times. (For detailed history of the costumes of different periods, see article on COSTUME and for certain principles underlying the subject, see Dans). Survivals in modern costume may sometimes be traced back to unexpected origins. With re gard to the modern evening dress-coat we learn that it owes its peculiarities to its descent from the old-time everyday garment in which a man rode and worked. <
attained its highest point of. significance in France during the last half of the 18th century?, when it marks unmistakably the various stages of the Revolution. Rousseau's 'Emile and Nou velle Helois& and Goethe's (Werther) brought sentimentality into fashion; women's hair was dressed in bandeaux d'amour or poufs de senti ment; and Marie Antoinette and the ladies of her court sought to return to the simplicity of nature by masquerading in the Trianon attired as shepherdesses and milkmaids. The works of Montesquieu and Voltaire had created an ad miration for England and the courtiers of Versailles dressed themselves like English fox hunting squires, while their wives and daugh ters got themselves up d l'Anglaise in coats with cuffs, collars and facings, beaver-hats and cravats. As the political turmoil increased, fashionable attire grew more and more eccentric and multiform, till at last republican institutions triumphed and the women of France began to clothe themselves as like as possible to those of Greece and Rome both in style and scantiness. They disregarded costly materials and shivered through the winter months clad in a few yards of muslin. Men wore a combination of antique and romantic costume invented by the painter David, which was finished off with Hungarian boots. At the present time the fashions for women in all civilized countries are set by Paris; for men, though not so exclusively, by London. One marked feature of the ever-chang ing kaleidoscope of fashion is its tendency to revolve in cycles. Cycles of alternate luxury and simplicity have also distinguished all ages. Fashions change more quickly each decade, a fact due in great measure to increased facilities of communication, while the triumph of democ racy is shown by their universal adoption by all classes. Consult 'Nos Aieules,' translated as 'Ten Centuries of Toilet,' by Mrs. Cashel Hoey (1892) ; Boutet, (Modes feminines du XIXe Slide) (Paris 1902) ; Geszler, (Die Mo den des XIX Jahrhundert) (Vienna 1897) ; Hill, 'History of English Dress' (London 1893) ; Price,
Fashion, 1786-1912> (ib. 1913); Uzanne, 'Les Modes de Paris' (Paris 1898). See also bibliography article COSTUME.