"There's never a new fashion but it's old"
About this Quote
Fashion’s dirtiest secret is that it sells time as novelty. Chaucer’s line, “There’s never a new fashion but it’s old,” lands like a medieval eye-roll aimed at the same human weakness we dress up today: the craving to look current while quietly recycling the past. Coming from a poet who watched courtly culture perform itself daily - through cloth, etiquette, and status signals - the remark isn’t just about hems and sleeves. It’s about social theater.
The intent is deflation. “New” is exposed as a marketing costume, a label slapped onto repetition so it can be consumed again without embarrassment. Chaucer knows that trends don’t progress; they loop. What changes is the story attached to them: a different court, a different crowd, a slightly tweaked silhouette, the same hunger to belong and to stand apart at once.
The subtext is moral and comic. Medieval fashion was expensive, visible, and politically legible: what you wore announced rank, allegiance, even moral suspicion. Sumptuary laws tried to freeze that hierarchy by regulating who could wear what. Chaucer’s cynicism suggests people will always find ways around the rules, and culture will always pretend those workarounds are innovations.
Why it works is the tight paradox. In seven words, “new” collapses into “old,” puncturing pretension without needing a sermon. It’s the kind of line that survives because it doesn’t merely observe fashion’s cycle; it mocks our willingness to be impressed by it.
The intent is deflation. “New” is exposed as a marketing costume, a label slapped onto repetition so it can be consumed again without embarrassment. Chaucer knows that trends don’t progress; they loop. What changes is the story attached to them: a different court, a different crowd, a slightly tweaked silhouette, the same hunger to belong and to stand apart at once.
The subtext is moral and comic. Medieval fashion was expensive, visible, and politically legible: what you wore announced rank, allegiance, even moral suspicion. Sumptuary laws tried to freeze that hierarchy by regulating who could wear what. Chaucer’s cynicism suggests people will always find ways around the rules, and culture will always pretend those workarounds are innovations.
Why it works is the tight paradox. In seven words, “new” collapses into “old,” puncturing pretension without needing a sermon. It’s the kind of line that survives because it doesn’t merely observe fashion’s cycle; it mocks our willingness to be impressed by it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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