The more an article becomes subject to rapid changes of fashion, the greater the demand for cheap products of its kind, not only because the larger and therefore poorer classes nevertheless have enough purchasing power to regulate industry and demand objects, which at least bear the outward semblance of style, but also because even the higher circles of society could not afford to adopt the rapid changes in fashion forced upon them by the imitation of the lower circles, if the objects were not relatively cheap. … It has been noticed, especially in the older branches of modern productive industry, that the speculative element gradually ceases to play an influential rôle. The movements of the market can be better overlooked, requirements can be better foreseen and production can be more accurately regulated than before, so that the rationalization of production makes greater and greater inroads on chance conjunctures, on the aimless vacillation of supply and demand. Only pure articles of fashion seem to prove an exception.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 741