As good be out of the world as out of the fashion.

This line is associated with Colley Cibber’s career as a playwright-actor in early eighteenth-century London, a milieu in which “fashion” meant more than clothing: it signified social currency, theatrical taste, and one’s standing in polite society. Cibber wrote for and performed before audiences keenly attentive to novelty and reputation, and his comedies repeatedly satirize the anxiety of appearing current. The aphorism reflects the period’s intense pressure to remain in vogue—socially and aesthetically—suggesting that to fall out of fashion was to become effectively invisible or irrelevant in the public world Cibber knew best.

Cibber’s epigram treats “fashion” not as mere clothing but as the social code that governs acceptance in polite society. The line suggests that to be excluded from prevailing taste and manners is, in practical terms, to be excluded from the world itself—socially invisible, without influence or opportunity. Read ironically, it also exposes the tyranny of fashion: if belonging depends on conformity to transient trends, then “the world” is shallow and coercive. The aphorism captures a recurring theme in Restoration and early eighteenth‑century comedy, where status is negotiated through appearances, wit, and adherence to the latest modes.