I have a question on how people historically viewed the phasing out of culture or style.
Think about some of the great styles. They typically dominated an era right? The Victorian era, etc. It seems that today you can tell when an unrenovated home was built just by looking at it's style and architecture. Clothing? Every 5 years you might as well throw out your wardrobe and buy the new trends.
Instead of a decades long contribution to an era of style, we have new home, clothing, and music design being pushed at us every decade.
Historically, is this really because of free market desires, or are advertisers purposefully pushing for us to view our current settings as antiquated in the hopes of us spending more money? If this trend continues how will great overarching styles or unity ever be created when there is such a push for everything to be "different" every 10 years? Instead of a city having an era feel, we'll have cities that look like every decade of trends threw up on the buildings within it's boarders.
Historically, have we ever had a time like this or are we witnessing an acceleration of style and cultural turnover?
This is mostly a question of perception: the more familiar you are with the styles of an era, whether your familiarity is from study or lived experience, the more variation you can see and the less unity you perceive. This is especially true of the lived experience, because instead of going from vaguer knowledge to specific, you have an intimate perspective from day one.
To go with clothing, it's easy to see "Victorian women's clothing" at first - heavy, layered, upholstered, dark. With more research and experience, you come to see decades, with particular styles emblematic of each one: the 1830s, the 1840s, the 1850s, the 1860s, the 1870s, the 1880s, the 1890s. You're able to slot most images you see into a decade, although you may end up with "1850s or 1860s" or "1870s or 1880s" at times.
Then you come to learn more, which makes it clear that fashion changed more quickly than every 10 years. The broad, high 1830s sleeves were only in fashion until 1836, when they fell, and then began to be pleated down on the upper arm and allowed to billow out around the elbow and forearm, or to be cut to fit the arm but decorated with ruffles. The fuller sleeves continued to be worn until about 1842. Meanwhile, the hem of the skirt, which had been at roughly ankle level in 1830, fell to the instep in 1834-1835; it also became fuller 1832-1833, and began to be more commonly cartridge pleated rather than knife pleated around 1834. And that's just basic construction! It doesn't take color, accessories, bonnet shape into account. These all make it possible to date a dress or image to a 3-4 year range within the broader time period.
Another good era to examine for this is the 1870s-1880s. As shown in the images linked above, both are thought of as characterized by the bustle. However, from 1876 to 1882, called the "Natural Form" period, the bustle was essentially gone - replaced with a thin layer of padding around the hips and a form of cage crinoline that held out the skirt only at the hem. This itself changed in shape along with the skirt above it, being more trained earlier in the period and more cylindrical later. And at the same time, there were changes in the level of the waistline, in the angle of the shoulder, in methods of trimming, etc. that did not follow the boundaries of either decade or stylistic period.
My point is, people in the Victorian era felt just as much pressure to replenish their wardrobes in order to appear up-to-date. Fashion plates were published regularly, generally in monthly publications, and changes could occur over the course of a single year or even a season. In reality, there's no objective standard that unifies all clothing of the Victorian era (1837-1901) or separates it from the clothing of the immediate years on either side.