Thorstein Veblen
The Economic Theory of Women's Dress.

Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XLVI, (Nov. 1894), pp. 198-205. 
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[198]
THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF WOMAN'S DRESS. 

By Dr. THORSTEIN VEBLEN, University of Chicago.

In human apparel the element of dress is readily distinguishable from that 
of clothing. The two functions - of dress and of clothing the person - are 
to a great extent subserved by the same material goods, although the extent 
to which the same material serves both purposes will appear very much 
slighter on second thought than it does at first glance. A differentiation 
of materials has long been going on, by virtue of which many things that 
are worn for the one purpose no longer serve, and are no longer expected to 
serve, the other. The differentiation is by no means complete. Much of 
human apparel is worn both for physical comfort and for dress; still more 
of it is worn ostensibly for both purposes. But the differentiation is 
already very considerable and is visibly progressing.

But, however united in the same object, however the two purposes may be 
served by the same material goods, the purpose of physical comfort and that 
of a reputable appearance are not to be confounded by the meanest 
understanding. The elements of clothing and of dress are distinct; not only 
that, but they even verge on incompatibility; the purpose of either is 
frequently best subserved by special means which are adapted to perform 
only a single line of duty. It is often true, here as elsewhere, that the 
most efficient tool is the most highly specialised tool.

Of these two elements of apparel dress came first in order of development, 
and it continues to hold the primacy to this day. The element of clothing, 
the quality of affording comfort, was from the beginning, and to a great 
extent it continues to be, in some sort an afterthought.

The origin of dress is sought in the principle of adornment. This is a 
well-accepted fact of social evolution. But that principle furnished the 
point of departure for the evolution of dress rather than the norm of its 
development. It is true of dress, as of so much else of the apparatus of 
life, that its initial purpose has not remained its sole or dominant 
purpose throughout the course of its later growth. It may be stated broadly 
that adornment, in the naive aesthetic sense, is a factor of relatively 
slight importance in modern dress.

The line of progress during the initial stage of the evolution of apparel 
was from the simple concept of adornment of the person by supplementary 
accessions from without, to the complex concept of an adornment that should 
render the person pleasing, or of an enviable presence, and at the same 
time serve to indicate the [199] possession of other virtues than that of a
well-favored person only. In this latter direction lies what was to evolve into 
dress. By the time dress emerged from the primitive efforts of the savage 
to beautify himself with gaudy additions to his person, it was already an 
economic factor of some importance. The change from a purely aesthetic 
character (ornament) to a mixture of the aesthetic and economic took place 
before the progress had been achieved from pigments and trinkets to what is 
commonly understood by apparel. Ornament is not properly an economic 
category, although the trinkets which serve the purpose of ornament may 
also do duty as an economic factor, and in so far be assimilated to dress. 
What constitutes dress an economic fact, properly falling within the scope 
of economic theory, is its function as an index of the wealth of its wearer 
- or, to be more precise, of its owner,, foor the wearer and owner are not 
necessarily the same person. It will hold with respect to more than one 
half the values currently recognised as "dress," especially that portion 
with which this paper is immediately concerned - woman's dress - that the 
wearer and the owner are different persons. But while they need not be 
united in the same person, they must be organic members of the same 
economic unit; and the dress is the index of the wealth of the economic 
unit which the wearer represents.

Under the patriarchal organisation of society, where the social unit was 
the man (with his dependents), the dress of the women was an exponent of 
the wealth of the man whose chattels they were. In modern society, where 
the unit is the household, the woman's dress sets forth the wealth of the 
household to which she belongs. Still, even today, in spite of the nominal 
and somewhat celebrated demise of the patriarchal idea, there is that about 
the dress of women which suggests that the wearer is something in the 
nature of a chattel; indeed, the theory of woman's dress quite plainly 
involves the implication that the woman is a chattel. In this respect the 
dress of women differs from that of men. With this exception, which is not 
of first-rate importance, the essential principles of woman's dress are not 
different from those which govern the dress of men; but even apart from 
this added characteristic the element of dress is to be seen in a more 
unhampered development in the apparel of women. A discussion of the theory 
of dress in general will gain in brevity and conciseness by keeping in view 
the concrete facts of the highest manifestation of the principles with 
which it has to deal, and this highest manifestation of dress is 
unquestionably seen in the apparel of the women of the most advanced modern 
communities.

The basis of the award of social rank and popular respect is the success, 
or more precisely the efficiency, of the social unit, as evidenced by its 
visible success. When efficiency eventuates in [200] possessions, in pecuniary 
strength, as it eminently does in the social system of our time, the basis 
of the award of social consideration becomes the visible pecuniary strength 
of the social unit. The immediate and obvious index of pecuniary strength 
is the visible ability to spend, to consume unproductively; and men early 
learned to put in evidence their ability to spend by displaying costly 
goods that afford no return to their owner, either in comfort or in gain. 
Almost as early did a differentiation set in, whereby it became the 
function of woman, in a peculiar degree, to exhibit the pecuniary strength 
of her social unit by means of a conspicuously unproductive consumption of 
valuable goods.

Reputability is in the last analysis, and especially in the long run, 
pretty fairly coincident with the pecuniary strength of the social unit in 
question. Woman, primarily, originally because she was herself a pecuniary 
possession, has become in a peculiar way the exponent of the pecuniary 
strength of her social group; and with the progress of specialisation of 
functions in the social organism this duty tends to devolve more and more 
entirely upon the woman. The best, most advanced, most highly developed 
societies of our time have reached the point in their evolution where it 
has (ideally) become the great, peculiar, and almost the sole function of 
woman in the social system to put in evidence her economic unit's ability 
to pay. That is to say, woman's place (according to the ideal scheme of our 
social system) has come to be that of a means of conspicuously unproductive 
expenditure.
The admissible evidence of the woman's expensiveness has considerable range 
in respect of form and method, but in substance it is always the same. It 
may take the form of manners, breeding, and accomplishments that are, prima 
facie, impossible to acquire or maintain without such leisure as bespeaks a 
considerable and relatively long-continued possession of wealth. It may 
also express itself in a peculiar manner of life, on the same grounds and 
with much the same purpose. But the method in vogue always and everywhere, 
alone or in conjunction with other methods, is that of dress. "Dress," 
therefore, from the economic point of view, comes pretty near being 
synonymous with "display of wasteful expenditure."

The extra portion of butter, or other unguent, with which the wives of the 
magnates of the African interior anoint their persons, beyond what comfort 
requires, is a form of this kind of expenditure lying on the border between 
primitive personal embellishment and incipient dress. So also the brass-
wire bracelets, anklets, etc., at times aggregating some thirty pounds in 
weight, worn by the same class of persons, as well as, to a less extent, by 
the male population of the same countries. So also the pelt of the arctic 
fur seal, which the women of civilised countries prefer to [201] fabrics that
are preferable to it in all respects but that of expense. So also the ostrich 
plumes and the many curious effigies of plants and animals that are dealt 
in by the milliners. The list is inexhaustible, for there is scarcely an 
article of apparel of male or female, civilised or uncivilised, that does 
not partake largely of this element, and very many may be said, in point of 
economic principle, to consist of virtually nothing else.

It is not that the wearers or the buyers of these wasteful goods desire the 
waste. They desire to make manifest their ability to pay. What is sought is 
not the de facto waste, but the appearance of waste. Hence there is a 
constant effort on the part of the consumers of these goods to obtain them 
at as good a bargain as may be; and hence also a constant effort on the 
part of the producers of these goods to lower the cost of their production, 
and consequently to lower the price. But as fast as the price of the goods 
declines to such a figure that their consumption is no longer prima facie 
evidence of a considerable ability to pay, the particular goods in question 
fall out of favor, and consumption is diverted to something which more 
adequately manifests the wearer's ability to afford wasteful consumption.
This fact, that the object sought is not the waste but the display of 
waste, develops into a principle of pseudo-economy in the use of material; 
so that it has come to be recognised as a canon of good form that apparel 
should not show lavish expenditure simply. The material used must be chosen 
so as to give evidence of the wearer's (owner's) capacity for making it go 
as far in the way of display as may be; otherwise it would suggest 
incapacity on the part of the owner, and so partially defeat the main 
purpose of the display. But what is more to the point is that such a mere 
display of crude waste would also suggest that the means of display had 
been acquired so recently as not to have permitted that long-continued 
waste of time and effort required for mastering the most effective methods 
of display. It would argue recent acquisition of means; and we are still 
near enough to the tradition of pedigree and aristocracy of birth to make 
long-continued possession of means second in point of desirability only to 
the possession of large means. The greatness of the means possessed is 
manifested by the volume of display; the length of possession is, in some 
degree, evidenced by the manifestation of a thorough habituation to the 
methods of display. Evidence of a knowledge and habit of good form in dress 
(as in manners) is chiefly to be valued because it argues that much time 
has been spent in the acquisition of this accomplishment; and as the 
accomplishment is in no wise of direct economic value, it argues pecuniary 
ability to waste time and labor. Such accomplishment, therefore, when 
possessed in a high degree, is evidence of a life (or of more than [202] one 
life) spent to no useful purpose; which, for purposes of respectability, 
goes as far as a very considerable unproductive consumption of goods. The 
offensiveness of crude taste and vulgar display in matters of dress ii, in 
the last analysis, due to the fact that they argue the absence of ability 
to afford a reputable amount of waste of time and effort.

Effective use of the means at hand may, further, be taken to argue 
efficiency in the person making the display; and the display of efficiency, 
so long as it does not manifestly result in pecuniary gain or increased 
personal comfort, is a great social desideratum. Hence it happens that, 
surprising as it may seem at first glance, a principle of pseudo-economy in 
the use of materials has come to hold a well-secured though pretty narrowly 
circumscribed place in the theory of dress, as that theory expresses itself 
in the facts of life. This principle, acting in concert with certain other 
requirements of dress, produces some curious and otherwise inexplicable 
results, which will be spoken of in their place.

The first principle of dress, therefore, is conspicuous expensiveness. As a 
corollary under this principle, but of such magnificent scope and 
consequence as to claim rank as a second fundamental principle, there is 
the evidence of expenditure afforded by a constant supersession of one 
wasteful garment or trinket by a new one. This principle inculcates the 
desirability, amounting to a necessity wherever circumstances allow, of 
wearing nothing that is out of date. In the most advanced communities of 
our time, and so far as concerns the highest manifestations of dress - 
e.g., in ball dress and the apparel worn on similar ceremonial occasions, 
when the canons of dress rule unhampered by extraneous considerations - 
this principle expresses itself in the maxim that no outer garment may be 
worn more than once.

This requirement of novelty is the underlying principle of the whole of the 
difficult and interesting domain of fashion. Fashion does not demand 
continual flux and change simply because that way of doing is foolish; flux 
and change and novelty are demanded by the central principle of all dress - 
conspicuous waste.

This principle of novelty, acting in concert with the motive of pseudo-
economy already spoken of, is answerable for that system of shams that 
figures so largely, openly and aboveboard, in the accepted code of dress. 
The motive of economy, or effective use of material, furnishes the point of 
departure, and, this being given, the requirement of novelty acts to 
develop a complex and extensive system of pretenses, ever varying and 
transient in point of detail, but each imperative during its allotted time-
facings, edgings, and the many (pseudo) deceptive contrivances that will 
occur to any one that is at all familiar with the technique of dress. This 
pretense of deception is often developed into a pathetic, [203] childlike make-
believe. The realities which it simulates, or rather symbolises, could not 
be tolerated. They would be in some cases too crudely expensive, in others 
inexpensive and more nearly adapted to minister to personal comfort than to 
visible expense; and either alternative is obnoxious to the canons of good 
form.

But apart from the exhibition of pecuniary strength afforded by an 
aggressive wasteful expenditure, the same purpose may also be served by 
conspicuous abstention from useful effort. The woman is, by virtue of the 
specialisation of social functions, the exponent of the economic unit's 
pecuniary strength, and it consequently also devolves on her to exhibit the 
unit's capacity to endure this passive form of pecuniary damage. She can do 
this by putting in evidence the fact (often a fiction) that she leads a 
useless life. Dress is her chief means of doing so. The ideal of dress, on 
this head, is to demonstrate to all observers, and to compel observation of 
the fact, that the wearer is manifestly incapable of doing anything that is 
of any use. The modern civilised woman's dress attempts this demonstration 
of habitual idleness, and succeeds measurably.

Herein lies the secret of the persistence, in modern dress, of the skirt 
and of all the cumbrous and otherwise meaningless drapery which the skirt 
typifies. The skirt persists because it is cumbrous. It hampers the 
movements of the wearer and disables her, in great measure, for any useful 
occupation. So it serves as an advertisement (often disingenuous) that the 
wearer is backed by sufficient means to be able to afford the idleness, or 
impaired efficiency, which the skirt implies. The like is true of the high 
heel, and in less degree of several other features of modern dress.
Herein is also to be sought the ground of the persistence (probably not the 
origin) of the one great mutilation practiced by civilised occidental 
womankind-the constricted waist, as well as of the analogous practice of 
the abortive foot among their Chinese sisters. This modern mutilation of 
woman is perhaps not to be classed strictly under the category of dress; 
but it is scarcely possible to draw the line so as to exclude it from the 
theory, and it is so closely coincident with that category in point of 
principle that an outline of the theory would be incomplete without 
reference to it.

A corollary of some significance follows from this general principle. The 
fact that voluntarily accepted physical incapacity argues the possession of 
wealth practically establishes the futility of any attempted reform of 
woman's dress in the direction of convenience, comfort, or health. It is of 
the essence of dress that it should (appear to) hamper, incommode, and 
injure the wearer, for in so doing it proclaims the wearer's pecuniary 
ability to endure idleness and physical incapacity.

[204] It may be noted, by the way, that this requirement, that women must appear 
to be idle in order to be respectable, is an unfortunate circumstance for 
women who are compelled to provide their own livelihood. They have to 
supply not only the means of living, but also the means of advertising the 
fiction that they live without any gainful occupation; and they have to do 
all this while encumbered with garments specially designed to hamper their 
movements and decrease their industrial efficiency.

The cardinal principles of the theory of woman's dress, then, are these 
three:
1. Expensiveness: Considered with respect to its effectiveness as clothing, 
apparel must be uneconomical. It must afford evidence of the ability of the 
wearer's economic group to pay for things that are in themselves of no use 
to any one concerned-to pay without getting an equivalent in comfort or in 
gain. From this principle there is no exception.
2. Novelty: Woman's apparel must afford prima facie evidence of having been 
worn but for a relatively short time, as well as, with respect to many 
articles, evidence of inability to withstand any appreciable amount of 
wear. Exceptions from this rule are such things as are of sufficient 
permanence to become heirlooms, and of such surpassing expensiveness as 
normally to be possessed only by persons of superior (pecuniary) rank. The 
possession of an heirloom is to be commended because it argues the practice 
of waste through more than one generation.
3. Ineptitude: It must afford prima facie evidence of incapacitating the 
wearer for any gainful occupation; and it should also make it apparent that 
she is permanently unfit for any useful effort, even after the restraint of 
the apparel is removed. From this rule there is no exception.

Besides these three, the principle of adornment, in the aesthetic sense, 
plays some part in dress. It has a certain degree of economic importance, 
and applies with a good deal of generality; but it is by no means 
imperatively present, and when it is present its application is closely 
circumscribed by the three principles already laid down. Indeed, the office 
of the principle of adornment in dress is that of handmaid to the principle 
of novelty, rather than that of an independent or co-ordinate factor. There 
are, further, minor principles that may or may not be present, some of 
which are derivatives of the great central requisite of conspicuous waste; 
others are of alien origin, but all are none the less subject to the 
controlling presence of the three cardinal principles enumerated above. 
These three are essential and constitute the substantial norm of woman's 
dress, and no exigency m, permanently set them aside so long as the chance 
of rivalry between [205] persons in respect of wealth remains. Given the 
possibility of a difference in wealth, and the sway of this norm of dress 
is inevitable. Some spasm of sense, or sentiment, or what not, may from 
time to time create a temporary and local diversion in woman's apparel; but 
the great norm of "conspicuous waste" cannot be set aside or appreciably 
qualified so long as this its economic ground remains.

To single out an example of the temporary effect of a given drift of 
sentiment, there has, within the past few years, come, and very nearly 
gone, a recrudescence of the element of physical comfort of the wearer, as 
one of the usual requirements of good form in dress. The meaning of this 
proposition, of course, is not what appears on its face; that seldom 
happens in matters of dress. It was the show of personal comfort that was 
lately imperative, and the show was often attained only at the sacrifice of 
the substance. This development, by the way, seems to have been due to a 
ramification of the sentimental athleticism (flesh-worship) that has been 
dominant of late; and now that the crest of this wave of sentiment has 
passed, this alien motive in dress is also receding.

The theory of which an outline has now been given is claimed to apply in 
full force only to modern woman's dress. It is obvious that, if the 
principles arrived at are to be applied as all-deciding criteria, "woman's 
dress" will include the apparel of a large class of persons who, in the 
crude biological sense, are men. This feature does not act to invalidate 
the theory. A classification for the purpose of economic theory must be 
made on economic grounds alone, and cannot permit considerations whose 
validity does not extend beyond the narrower domain of the natural sciences 
to mar its symmetry so far as to exclude this genial volunteer contingent 
from the ranks of womankind.

There is also a second, very analogous class of persons, whose apparel 
likewise, though to a less degree, conforms to the canons of woman's dress. 
This class is made up of the children of civilised society. The children, 
with some slight reservation of course, are, for the purpose of the theory, 
to be regarded as ancillary material serving to round out the great 
function of civilised womankind as the conspicuous consumers of goods. The 
child in the hands of civilised woman is an accessory organ of conspicuous 
consumption, much as any tool in the hands of a laborer is an accessory 
organ of productive efficiency.
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