For a number of years the practioners and scholars of fashion have held different views of the consumer. Fashion designers and marketers have traditionally regarded consumers as followers who automatically accept the style dictates and purchase products without any resistance. In contrast, fashion historians and scholars held just the opposite view. To them the consumer is a free individual whose needs must be examined and considered before a new style is introduced. In this article the ideas of such historians as Paul Mystiom, Flaccus, and Tarde are examined. While writing in the early 1900’s, their observations and theories are remarkably similar to the “marketing concept” so often mentioned in the more contemporary marketing literature.