The most fashionable thing anyone can possibly wear is the least fashionable thing. It's an incredibly potent counter-signal. Haute couture is deliberately, wilfully hideous.
Not anyone, only those lucky enough to have sufficient inherent attractiveness to outshine anything they could put on. When those have established a new aesthetic (either top-down/haute, or bottom-up/street), the industry comes in and skillfully polishes away the rough edges so that the basic idea can also work on the less fortunate, who will then for a brief period be able to enjoy a "pretty by association" halo effect.
Sceptics sometimes consider the fashion lifecycle to be some kind of artificial conspiracy made up by the industry to create demand, but I think it is more an emergent phenomenon of human interaction that could only ever be subdued by extreme scarcity or by draconian regulation (e.g. rules applying to lower classes in many feudal society).
Sceptics sometimes consider the fashion lifecycle to be some kind of artificial conspiracy made up by the industry to create demand, but I think it is more an emergent phenomenon of human interaction that could only ever be subdued by extreme scarcity or by draconian regulation (e.g. rules applying to lower classes in many feudal society).