Daily Inspiration Quote by William Shakespeare

Fashion, in Shakespeare's hands, is never just cloth; it's a social performance with a body trapped inside it. "I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man" flips the expected hierarchy. People are supposed to wear clothes. Here, "fashion" becomes the active agent, consuming garments faster than the wearer can justify them. The joke lands because it treats trendiness as a kind of appetite: mindless, repetitive, and oddly expensive.

The intent is pointedly skeptical. Shakespeare is needling the vanity economy of his day, where status was broadcast through fabric, cut, and novelty, and where staying current required constant replacement. "Wears out" does double duty: literal deterioration from use, and moral erosion from obsession. The man is passive, even diminished; his identity gets outsourced to what he puts on, and then to whatever the crowd decides is next.

Subtext: fashion doesn't serve the individual; the individual serves fashion. That's a sharper critique than simple thrift-mongering. It's about how quickly collective taste can turn personal choice into compulsion, and how selfhood becomes a moving target when it's tethered to appearance.

Context matters because early modern England was anxious about outward signs. Sumptuary laws tried (and failed) to police who could wear what, precisely because clothing threatened to scramble class boundaries. Shakespeare spots the absurdity: trends promise distinction, but they mass-produce insecurity. The line still reads like a timeless roast of consumer culture because it understands the real engine of fashion: not beauty, but churn.