Fashion – Past Perfect or future perfect

Introduction

One term that you come across very often these days is fashion. You have fashion designers, fashion shows, fashionable celebrities, in-fashion statements and the list goes on.

Now I am no expert on fashion but I have my own limited understanding of the term and my own definitions. As far as I know fashion is niche, exclusive and never inclusive, it is a spectacle; it makes a person stand out in a crowd.

Can some one explain me how in the world a crowd that looks the same, dresses the same is the in-crowd and not the out-crowd?

One argument can be that it is based on ones frame of reference, for example rich are fashionable to aspiring class, aspiring to the middle class and so & so forth. Fair enough, so within their own set all these people are the out-crowd and somewhere else the in-crowd. Ahem, I lost myself somewhere there.

Another anomaly that I find very interesting is that fashion is something that might become popular in the future and would no longer be fashion, what I call future perfect. “Might” is a key word, fashion is unpredictable.

Please don’t confuse fashion with fad though both are very close to each other. I will explain “might” later. To continue the story, but what we have is months in advance designers parading anorexic bodies displaying the future and surprise surprise they are right.

Before we take this further let me explain why I say “might” become popular. Fashion is individualistic by nature and hence not popular and never mass.

There is a very popular quote on fashion which goes “people who follow fashion are wearing _______ and those who make fashion are not.”

So an individuals taste can become the norm (& in turn move out of fashion to popular domain) and maybe not.

So what we define fashion is nothing but past-perfect and never future perfect.