"Dedicated follower of fashion"
...and like it or not, that song writer had a pretty shrewd take on human nature.
He was well aware just how influenced even the most hardened cynic can be by fashion.
Once, very appropriate for the office.
Fashions in clothes and music are obvious, as are those in architecture.
Fashion in furniture and politics, in films and in books, in politics and thought.
Fashion dominates our world.
We raise and educate our children according to the code that our place and generation educate.
Houses are an obvious example of changing tastes in design.
There was a fashion for towers, and piers and many other things.
In both, fashion ruled, but in England especially it was both tempered and promoted by being tied to the quite extraordinary class system.
The words you used, the accent you spoke, your hobbies, your sports, your duties and privileges, your very ideas and thoughts, were as rigidly drawn as in any caste ridden Indian village.
What was less obvious was the part that fashion played. These things were not fixed, they changed from generation to generation.
They came with the first settlers and remain in all their bizarre glory to this very day.
We live in a strange snobbish, irrational fashion-driven world, but fortunately there is a counter-culture. It began, very logically to flower in England in Edwardian days and to become the perfect counter culture.
Make the most of it...it can give you much pleasure and help make your self-sufficiency dream a real possibility.
Making an exhibition of oneself?
There is a choice.
As always, the Irish competed and produced some even more wondrous examples of individualist people.
The US produced complete populations who defied all convention.
The Australians managed to build a nation on defiance of conformity, indeed to the extent where the conventional has now become abnormal...
...and that really summarises fashion - unimportant and fleeting.
The self-sufficient can leave it behind and enjoy the process of rebellion.
The self-sufficient dreamer probably fantasises about Barbours and riding boots. The reality is working shirts, dungarees and cheap rubber boots.
The posh frock and tuxedo will lie at the back of the wardrobe, until they too go out of fashion. The office suit will do the same.
Goodbye!
No attraction to joy-riders.
The most unfashionable colour and manufacturer will be cheaper second-hand and just as good.
It won't attract car thieves, envy or the attention of traffic cops.
You will save money on insurance, probably fuel, and certainly depreciation.
You will truly miss having to make polite conversation whilst standing with cheap champagne in one hand and balancing a plate with the other.
The only people to come into your home won't admire the furniture, and will probably be more interested in the dog, than the decor.
Fine food and a very different conversation.
The tales of recapturing the cow, will be more interesting than the story of holidays past and the last business trip.
It cost you a fortune every year - more than you ever realised.
You have left "keeping up with the Joneses" behind you.
You can do things no employer would ever tolerate.
You no longer have to impress anyone with your standing in the community, your financial integrity, your reliability, your taste or good sense.
You have just saved a fortune by stepping off the treadmill.
You don't actually have to take to the road.
It really comes down to settling your own style and living the way you want -
a kind of freedom.
You can decimate your current expenditure and enjoy a new freedom from conformity.
Having suggested that you can save money by becoming eccentric, you can return to Income, or go on to think about the Capital you might need or return to Doing Without .
If you feel it is still impossible you can consider keeping your job and your business suit as suggested in Financial Support.