![]() ![]() ![]() Richard Thompson Ford presents a history of the laws of fashion from the middle ages to the present day, a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores, and customs of clothing-rules that we often take for granted. In Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History (Simon & Schuster, 2021), law professor and cultural critic Dr. In some cities, wearing sagging pants is a crime. ![]() People lose their jobs for wearing braided hair, long fingernails, large earrings, beards, and tattoos or refusing to wear a suit and tie or make-up and high heels. In the 1700s, South Carolina’s “Negro Act” made it illegal for Black people to dress “above their condition.” In the 1920s, the bobbed hair and form-fitting dresses worn by free-spirited flappers were banned in workplaces throughout the United States.Įven in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it-and what our clothing means. ![]() Dress codes evolved along with the social and political ideals of the day, but they always reflected struggles for power and status. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. ![]()
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