As suggested above, the exact origin of the appearential order of the preindustrial city is lost in history. But while that is true, there is certainly no mystery regarding who struggled to maintain it, or at least that aspect of it relating to status. The elites waged a continual, and in the long run, losing battle to differentiate themselves from the "common herd." The fact that they could not even rely on tradition but had to have recourse to the repeated enactment of laws, suggests just how much of a battle it was. Wherever economic conditions allowed great wealth to concentrate in hands other than those of the nobility, the battle intensified.

QUESTION: Why did the appearance of the preindustrial city matter so much to elites that they enacted repeated laws to preserve it? Worth tracing how legal sumptuary/status regulation evolved.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 293