Laver’s Law on Fashion

"Indecent – 10 years before its time

Shameless – 5 years before its time

Daring – 1 year before its time

Smart – ‘Current Fashion’

Dowdy – 1 year after its time

Hideous – 10 years after its time

Ridiculous – 20 years after its time

Amusing – 30 years after its time

Quaint – 50 years after its time

Charming – 70 years after its time

Romantic – 100 years after its time

Beautiful – 150 years after its time"

-James Laver ‘Laver’s Law’, from Taste and Fashion, 1945


"Fashion is a form of ugliness, so unbearable, that we have to alter it every six months"
                                - Oscar Wilde

Who are we?

A friend who is highly sensitive to praise and criticism wanted to get away, 'Just go away from the madding crowd' she said. So away she went to the Himalayas, returning two weeks later looking worse than when she left.

On quizzing her I learnt that her problems and concerns accompanied her. She could not stop thinking about what what people were talking about her. We have put our happiness and peace of mind in the hands of others for their opinions shape our beliefs about ourselves.

Most of us live our lives in differing shades of this same situation.


"You do not have your own face, you  have only opinions of others about you. Somebody says you are beautiful and you start to think you are beautiful. Somebody says you are ugly, and you feel hurt and you carry a wound that someone says you are 'ugly' - you have become ugly.

You are just an accumulation of the opinion of others, you do not know who you are. You know only what others think you are. And this is strange, because those others who think who you are don't know themselves. - they know themselves through you. This is a beautiful game: I know myself through you, you know yourself through me and we both don't know who we are."

                                                                                     - Osho