The continual adoption of new fashions among the many styles of available clothing is similar to Darwin's theory of natural selection. The driving force for fashion change is the need for social groups to express their unique identity through clothing, which fostered the rise of the fashion industry in the Industrial Age. Fashion culture has always been defined by change, its constant search for the newest design, which gives it a formal similarity with other systems that rely on continuous innovation (Purdy 1). Clothing, and more generally, style, can be important non-verbal representations of an individual's status in society.
Clothing has been used to distinguish among classes from the earliest historical record. One early literary reference is the General Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written in the Fourteenth Century. Chaucer used a description of clothing to highlight social differences which were important in the narrative of the pilgrim's journey. Wealth and social stature was implied in the description of the Doctor of Medicine's clothing, "he was dressed entirely with taffeta and finest silk" (Chaucer 23). Chaucer then contrasted the doctor with the Yeoman's bow and arrows, "the yeoman was dressed in a coat and hood of green; beneath his belt he carefully carried a sheaf of bright, green peacock-feathered arrows (well did he know how to take care of his equipment: his arrows never dropped with tired feathers!)" (Chaucer 7).
Fashion was an important mark of position in the rise of the leisure class in post-industrial society. Adopting the latest fashion, such as the high heel at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, can be expensive, which serves to exclude the lower classes. Thorstein Veblen observed in The Theory of the Leisure Class that admission to the leisure class was at least partly through the culture of fashion.
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