Fashion

Temporary prevailing custom, a matter of capricious taste established by the few and deferred to by the many. Though the tryranny of fashion is most noticeable in COSTUME (q.v.), it is just as despotic in furniture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature. It goes even further, for philosophy in Athens, suicide in Rome, and piety in Florence have been the fashion at various times. In England, learning in the 16th century, puritanism and license in the 17th, the Grand Tour and dilettanteism in the 18th were succe ively fashionable, while in France religion and riot alternated with atheism and the Rights of Man. Among savages fashion is equally strong. The Chinese deformed foot, Siamese long finger-nails, Guinea broken noses, American flat-heads, and Hottentot Venuses with extraordinary buttock development are instances. Add to these nose-, ear-, and lip-perforation, and tattooing; proof that fashion may demand even self-mutilation.