'via Blog this'
Con l’ invenzione della “moda” il persuasore occulto vende ogni anno tonnellate di merce al consumista beota:
“… but we find fashion patterns in goods for which there is no commercial market... Historian Anne Hollander notes that fashion in clothing has existed for eight hundred years, centuries longer than the apparel business. The shifty character of what looks right is not new, and was never a thing deliberately created to impose male will on females, or capitalist will on the population, or designers’ will on public taste…
… Nobody runs ads to convince parents to choose Emily or Joshua for their newborns. No magazine editors authoritatively dictate that “Ryan is the new Michael.” But names still shift according to fashion. Name choices, like clothing choices, are influenced by the desire to be different but not too different…
… Contrary to common assumptions about how fashion works, Lieberson finds that names don’t trickle down in a simple way from high-income, well-educated parents to lower-income, less-educated parents. Newly popular names tend to catch on with everyone at about the same time. External influences, such as the names of celebrities or fictional characters, do play a role in what’s popular. But cause and effect are complicated. Fictional characters don’t just publicize possible names; their creators, like new parents, select those names from the current milieu…"
The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness (P.S.) by Virginia Postrel
