If you are a man working in business today, you don't wear the same dark suit, dark tie and dark fedora as every other man at the office. If you are a woman working in business today, you are allowed to wear pants. Not so in times past. Fashion provides a window on increasing individualism in western society.

Here is Alfred Marshall at the turn of the 20th century (Principles of Economics, 8th ed., Book III, Ch. 1.).

But in dress conventional wants overshadow those which are natural. Thus in many of the earlier stages of civilization the sumptuary mandates of Law and Custom have rigidly prescribed to the members of each caste or industrial grade, the style and the standard of expense up to which their dress must reach and beyond which they may not go; and part of the substance of these mandates remains now, though subject to rapid change. In Scotland, for instance, in Adam Smith's time many persons were allowed by custom to go abroad without shoes and stockings who may not do so now; and many may still do it in Scotland who might not in England. Again, in England now a well-to-do labourer is expected to appear on Sunday in a black coat and, in some places, in a silk hat; though these would have subjected him to ridicule but a short time ago.

Here is Paul Nystrom in 1928 (The Economics of Fashion, p.9):

If any reader of this should doubt the power of fashion, let him try a simple experiment and note his own reactions. Let him put on clothes or even a hat such as worn by a past generation and then go out as casually as he can among his acquaintances or in fact among strangers and note, first, their reactions toward him and then his feelings toward himself. There will be quizzical looks, doubtful stares and critical estimates. He will be thought queer. He will be judged as lacking in brain power and, perhaps, as an undesirable person. If he persists in his experiment, he will, if he is an employee, lose his job. He will lose his customers if he is a salesman. He will lose his votes if he is a politician. He will lose his custom if he is a doctor or lawyer. He will lose all of his friends.

And here is Virginia Postrel at the turn of the 21st century (The Substance of Style, 2003, pp.63-4):

Until relatively recently, social convention restricted the aesthetic play of imagination and technology. Forget hip-hop flamboyance and punk transgression. In the 1960s, nice girls didn’t dye their hair or get their ears pierced. Michael Jordan’s tailored but body- and fashion-conscious dress (not to mention his earring) would have been too conspicuous, a reminder of black men’s too unseemly pride in their personal style. As recently as 1983, a leading fashion critic could describe Armani suits as representing “a style that is decidedly homosexual,” and thus of limited appeal to mainstream professional men, who feared being thought effeminate unless they chose clothes that go unnoticed. The extension of liberal individualism—the primacy of self-definition over hierarchy and inherited, group-determined status—has changed our aesthetic universe… Instead of a single dominant standard, then, we see aesthetic fluidity. Individuals recombine styles that please them, and those combinations in turn create ever more ideas and categories that can be further recombined.

Earring indeed! How about spacers or scalpelling? Yuk.