[T]his puzzle is, in the present state of evolutionary and sociological thinking, insoluble. Fashion is change and obsolescence imposed on a pattern of tyrannical conformity. Fashion is about status, and yet the sex that is obsessed with fashion is trying to impress the sex that cares least about status.

Walking here in the galleries, I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like men, and buttoned their doublets up the breast, with perriwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men’s coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever—which was an odde sight, and a sight did not please me.