All the logics that were embodied in the clothing business are now everywhere, and whether someone is selling you a car or a kitchen, they’re doing so by following the logic of fashion. This new hybridity gives an extraordinary depth to the concept of fashion, because for thousands of years there was no fashion, and then at the end of the Middle Ages fashion started with clothing. Nowadays there is more fashion content in a smartphone launch than in a new clothing collection. This idea has become central in order to understand our society.
Gilles Lipovetsky at Style.com (If you’re interested in social theory, Lipovetsky wrote a great book on the relationship between fashion and the development of liberalism. You can find a review of it at the London Review of Books).