“Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken by it.”
Quoted by William Hazlitt in Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. http://books.google.com/books?id=PzQ1AQAAIAAJ&q="Fashion+is+gentility+running+away+from+vulgarity+and+afraid+of+being+overtaken+by+it"&pg=PA264#v=onepage (1830)
