The difference between style and fashion is quality

When I started this blog months ago, I was advised that it was time to jump wholeheartedly into the 21^st Century and start building up my Online Identity.  Nevermind that I’ve designed my own online portfolio, that my work and my name can easily be found online through Google, and that I indulgently waste time on various other online socializing networks; without a Twitter account, it seemed like my online life, and therefore my blog, would slowly and painfully whither away into nothing without frequent 140-character snippets of my life.
If you’re intrigued, follow me at ObsrvatnlstNYC.
I promise I’m interesting.
Whenever I have the luxury to scroll through my Twitter Feed, I always find it interesting.  I’m not one to follow “personalities” with reckless abandon.  I try to select people that have some reasonable connection with my life.  Maybe they’re theater artists I’ve worked with in the past, genuine friends, family members, or people who have a quick wit and deft usage of the 140-character maximum; regardless, if I follow you, consider it a huge vote of confidence.
Recently, however, one of my selected few posted the observed comment.
“The difference between style and fashion is quality.”
It was credited to a well-known designer.  As much appreciation as I have for SOME of the contributed fashion ideas by that designer, I couldn’t help but take offense at that specific tweet.
Am I to infer, from that less-than-140-characters text, that fashion is superior to style?  Or is it the other way around?
Quickly, I responded with my concern: “I don’t agree. Anyone can have/develop style; FASHION prices itself out of reach of many. Expensive doesn’t = quality.”
My twitter follower never responded.  Did “she” disagree?  Or was she not taking my comment seriously?
Style and Fashion are two completely different ideas.  Fashion is an industry; it’s an idea given to us by designers and marketers and businessmen and women.  Style, in my opinion, is the opposite.
Anyone can have style.  Style isn’t something that you purchase, that you’re given by the world at large.
I sincerely believe that Style, when concerning clothing, is something that you develop personally.  It has nothing to do with trends or magazine spreads; it’s an aesthetic composition that you (un)knowingly endorse.  Style is an advertisement of you.  It tells us, the people and world around you, who you are and what you stand for.
Fashion, on the other hand, is a mercurial and temporal idea.  It changes with the seasons, with the displacement of head designers at random sartorial companies.  Fashion, it seems, is all about change and evolution.  If anything, fashion is impersonal.  It shouldn’t define who you are.  It’s an idea that will be outdated in a few weeks time.
Style, on the other hand, can be inspiring and definitive for a lifetime.
Classic is always classic.  Other things are what they are; there’s no point in judging how people put themselves together.  It’s not a question of quality; I believe it’s a question of how you compose yourself in the world.
That, and how you react, defines quality.