The lower strata

"Just as soon as the lower strata begin to appropriate their style—and thereby overstep the demarcation line which the upper strata have drawn and destroy the uniformity of their coherence symbolized in this fashion—so the upper strata turn away from this fashion and adopt a new one, which in turn differentiates them from the broad masses. And thus the game goes merrily on." Simmer, "The Philosophy of Fashion" (1905) in Simmer on Culture: Selected Writings, eds. Frisky and Feather stone, 190. How does this quotation relate to a particular example of the cycle of adoption, appropriation, and abandonment? You could think about Marie Antoinette's poufs and white dresses, hip-hop and street style, high fashion's fetish wear, practices of racial and/or gender "drag," the phenomenon of post-Civil War black middle-class fashions, or an example of your own. Your response should be two paragraphs. What is a "Fashion Revolution" at the level of the signifies? How does the Freudian concept of fetishism help us to understand the compulsion to look.                                                    

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