The fashionable socially elite. A late-nineteenth-century term on both sides of the Atlantic, it was sometimes used more for the flashy nouveau riche, as by Ward McAllister: “Behind what I call the ‘smart set’ in society, there always stood the old, solid, substantial, respected people” (Society As I Have Found It, 1890). In the mid-1900s it was largely replaced by jet set, and then by beautiful people.