I recently visited a pioneer house, turned into a little musuem.
Along with hand made furniture, wagons and farm tools there was a display of women'ts dresses. My tour group, clad in jeans and t-shirts, shared a collective sense of disbelief at the tiny proportions of these heavily layered garments with the rigid corsets underneath.
We wondered how anyone could even breath in clothes like that, much less do any physical work. So much fabric to carry around. We learned that the the water buckets near the fireplace were for putting out skirt fires.
Our guide explained that this clothing was what was society expected women to wear. Anything else would be regarded as quite improper.
We could all agree that this was a case of fashion insanity. There seemed to be no good reason for a human being to cloth themselves like that.
So I look out at our carefully trimmed lawns and wonder - in 200 years will this look just as insane? Will the people of the future understand the destructiveness of these large smooth areas of monoculture grass, drenched in fertilizer and weed killer and assaulted by fuel gobbling machines dumping their exhaust into the air.
Maybe there will be museums where the visitors can gasp in horror at the typical suburban lawn
Fashionable insanity.