In the 1940s, flamboyant zoot suits inspired riots in Los Angeles in response, California lawmakers tried to outlaw them.

In the 1920s, workplace dress codes banned the bobbed hair and close-fitting skirts of the flappers and until the mid-20th century, women wearing trousers could face arrest for public indecency. In Siena, Italy, religious authorities insisted that jewelry, makeup and other “vanities” were a “sign of the whore” and threatened that women wearing them should expect men to demand sex just as a thirsty traveler would “demand wine from a taverner.”Ĭenturies later, similar laws reinforced America’s racial and gender inequality: South Carolina’s Negro Act of 1740 prohibited enslaved people from dressing “above their condition,” among numerous other restrictions. Most days I struggle with grief and rage.' (Photo: Shutterstock) ShutterstockĪuthorities in Elizabethan London deemed one hapless commoner’s showy attire “contrary to good order” and ordered the linings ripped out of his pants before he was marched through the streets of the city as a cautionary example for all to see. Governments from Tudor England to the city-states of the Italian peninsula responded with sumptuary laws to make sure that only elites could wear luxurious clothing: these dress codes made a well-established hierarchy tangible and visible.Ī year into the pandemic, Thomas Lake writes, 'Are you holding it together? I am not.

It didn’t take long for all those who could afford it – and quite a few who couldn’t – to use fashion to express themselves and either assert or transcend social order. Toward the end of the middle ages, a booming economy and new developments in tailoring helped usher in new, highly expressive fashions. Dress codes have been an unavoidable part of life for centuries as I discovered when researching my book “ Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.” The urge to judge people through appearances – and to attempt to regulate them – recurs throughout history. Fashion consciousness, forced to shelter in place, turned its focus to shelter. It’s telling that Room Rater, which began as a lighthearted assessment of webcam lighting and composition, has become a kind of status competition that rewards the most prestigious items of furniture, works of art, bottles of wine and other accoutrements of taste and privilege. We stage managed webcam-friendly bookshelves, groaning with weighty tomes and strategically placed books that announced our hipness, creativity, political values or interests. Some people have settled for a designated “Zoom shirt” reserved specifically for video appearances while others have taken to quarantine-friendly athleisure designed to communicate a down-to-earth nonchalance. Indeed, now we need to make ourselves and our homes presentable while also managing the new demands of kids learning remotely from home. Richard Thompson Ford Courtesy Richard Thompson Ford

Dress codes by richard thompson ford