Dedicated followers of fashion
Have been given to think by various things hither and yon, about people who desire to be cool, and therefore look at the cool people (or the people whom they perceive to be the Cool Kidz) and go and do likewise. Except, getting it wrong either ever so slightly or by massive degrees. Partly, sometimes, it seems, because they are taking their idea of Teh Kewl from different and not entirely congruous places.
But also, I'm not sure you can be cool by being a follower (Cordelia to Harmony on being a sheep...)
This reminded me, because I am like a living archive, of Mods in the Sixties.
And at the top of the hierarchy, you had the Faces, who created and set the trends. Also the Stylists, who were considered perhaps rather more individualistic than the Faces, or were distinctive but not particularly imitated.
Because 'the tickets' (aka 'the numbers') were all about seeing what the Faces did and then doing it. (The Kinks' 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion' was surely a ticket, and I'm not entirely sure The High Numbers, later known as The Who's 'I Am The Face' was not meant to be ironic).
Whereas the Faces presumably had both a personal sense of the Mod aesthetic and a dedication to seeking out fashions that matched that aspiration to style. Rather than waiting for someone else to act as a role-model for them.
Presumably there were also tickets who desired to be Faces but lacked the je-ne-sais-quoi (sort of lke those characters in Heyer who desire to be trend-setting Pinks of the Ton but are into fop-failure mode instead).
And okay, at the moment I have something going on which I think probably gives me large amounts of cool-by-association: except that I am dubious about that entire concept.
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