“Have I been influenced, or is this actually me?” – How personal taste fell out of fashion.

To flout or subvert stylistic codes you have to be fluent in them – and the higher up the class structure you sit, the more latitude you have to do so. Think of the lord of the manor free to indulge his sartorial eccentricities versus uniformed blue-collar workers. In theory, though, anyone can break the rules; the most experimental dressing in the 20th century came from grassroots subcultures such as punk and the New Romantics.