Wealth & Money Quote by Nicolas Chamfort

Fashion, for Chamfort, is less a playground of taste than a quiet revenue system - one that transfers money upward and humiliation downward, while letting everyone pretend it is art. The line works because it frames style as a tax: compulsory, recurring, and disguised as choice. You can opt out in theory, but socially you pay.

Chamfort's bite is aimed at the rich, but he refuses to sentimentalize the poor. "Industry of the poor" carries a double edge. It honors labor and ingenuity, yet also suggests a machinery that must keep running, forever inventing new silhouettes and new "must-haves" to keep the wealthy spending. The poor don't overthrow the rich; they service them, profit from them, and, crucially, understand them. Vanity becomes a predictable resource, like a mine that can be worked.

The subtext is political economy, smuggled into a salon-ready epigram. In late-18th-century France, luxury trades (textiles, tailoring, accessories) were booming even as inequality hardened and the old order grew brittle. Chamfort, a razor-tongued moralist who lived through the approach to revolution, recognizes how the ancien regime converts anxiety into consumption. Novelty isn't about beauty; it's about status defense. The rich need to stay ahead of imitation, so the goalposts move. Fashion's "change" is the system's heartbeat.

It's also a joke about complicity: the poor get paid, the rich get flattered, and the whole society gets distracted - until it can't afford the distraction anymore.