India, May 16 -- In 1999, the American toy company Mattel released a Trend Forecaster Barbie, as a limited-edition collectors' item.

She was dressed in a faux-leather swing coat, matching mini-skirt, "sassy little camisole" and ankle-strap platform shoes. If there were some who thought this derivative, unimaginative or silly, well, they could join the ranks of trend debaters dating to Ancient Rome.

By the 1st century BCE, leaders such as the philosopher and military commander Pliny the Elder were so tired of the fuss over the silk flooding in from China, for instance, that he wrote that it was having a corrupting influence on Roman society.

These vestments, "while they cover a woman, at the same moment reveal her naked charms," he said...