<P></P> <P>Oscar Wilde was a consumer modernist. His modernist aesthetics drove him into the heart of the mass culture industries of 1890s London, particularly the journalism and popular theatre industries. </P> <P></P> <P>Wilde was extremely active in these industries: as a journalist at the Pall Mall Gazette; as magazine editor of the Women's World; as commentator on dress and design through both of these; and finally as a fabulously popular playwright.</P> <P></P> <P>Because of his desire to impact a mass audience, the primary elements of Wilde's consumer aesthetic were superficial ornament and ephemeral public image - both of which he linked to the theatrical. This concern with the surface and with the ephemeral was, ironically, a foundational element of what became twentieth-century modernism - thus we can call Wilde's aesthetic a consumer modernism, a root and branch of modernism that was largely erased. </P>