Selection as Discipline
The thread running from dress to interiors to prose: that quality is what survives subtraction.
The wiki's sources, read together, keep arriving at one idea through different doors: that quality is a matter of what has been left out. A Guide to Elegance makes it the meaning of the word itself — eligere, to choose — and the discipline of the wardrobe. The Decoration of Houses makes it the law of the room: ornament is the reward for proportion, not a remedy for its absence. Clear and Simple as the Truth makes it the law of the sentence: classic prose is the residue of everything refused.
One Discipline, Several Surfaces
These are not analogies loosely drawn but one discipline practised on different materials. To select is to subtract; to subtract well requires knowing what a thing is for. The faculty is the same whether the material is cloth, a room, or a paragraph, and it connects directly to the cross-domain concepts of Selection and Restraint — and, in their own domains, to Elegance is Selection and Proportion.