The difference between mere fashion and intrinsic style is radical and complete. Fashion may be, and often is, stylistically bad, but however good it chances upon occasion to be, it has but one use in decoration - to point the way to what is to be avoided.

For a mode to be in fashion to-day implies that it will be passe to-morrow - its main characteristic is impermanence, and no sooner is a fashion decreed than it is tumbled from its throne in favour of something either better or worse but certainly different. So, unless the reader desires to chase a phantom and furnish anew each year, mere fashion should be ignored. But not so with style.

What then is style? It is the ultimate perfection; of appropriateness; of beauty, in all its components - material, form, colour, contrast, and ornament. Style also includes directness of procedure; it includes snap and chic. When the blacksmith with a few expert blows upon the hot iron shapes the shoe, plunges it into water, places it against the horse's hoof and the spectator notes its precise fit he says: "Some style, that!" When the artist, painting from nature, rapidly, unerringly, and beautifully gaining his effect, overhears a bystander say to his companion: "That man knows his business", he happily smiles at what he recognizes is a tribute to his style. When the poet writes such lines as:

For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: we reverently bend our heads; for we cannot doubt that this is style.