Fashion never happens at any fixed point in time or space--that is, individuals and groups are never fully fashionable but are always in the process of becoming fashionable or descending into unfashionability, and, in all probability, doing both at the same time.

Fashion is a striving to overcome the spatial divide between classes, to overcome the invidious comparisons between "them and us", to catch up and overtake the "in crowd". In other words, what it would like to do is to abolish the very incline that enables the fashion dynamic to exist.