FESTIVE FASHION
Police BY NIKKI HIND
A
s we all venture back out into the social world this Festive Season, after some of the longest periods of lockdown and isolation in global history, what will we be wearing ? Have we lost our style confidence ? Have we redefined how and why we wear what we wear ? Do we even remember how to put anything other than tracky pants on ? Or are we BUSTING to breakout the party shoes and dresses !?
Fashion Guards would be posted outside the gates of cities to check that people were not dressing ABOVE their social station, or against the Rules Of Apparel. The punishment was marching the person through the streets with their clothes torn and dragging behind them - ripping their unearned status literally off their body.
Regardless of what you choose to step-out in this Festive Season, take a moment to reflect on the joy and hard-fought privilege of having that choice. For the majority of fashion’s history, there were very strict rules, especially for women; and there were very serious consequences for breaking those rules. Richard Thompson Ford, is a Professor at Stanford Law School and author of ‘Dress Codes’; an historical look at the real Fashion Police.
These Rules Of Apparel were used in reverse by Royalty and the aristocracy, in a practice called ‘Class Cross Dressing’. … No, this is not where the term ‘Queen’ came from ! The rules of fashion were so adhered to, that you could take a break from the constraints and responsibilities of your station or class, simply by casting off your station’s clothes for a little while; and dressing as far below your station as required for suitable recouperation – Henry the 8th did it regularly.
In the book he talks to the fact that, historically we were much more comfortable with the idea that clothing and fashion matters. Society was more likely to be explicit in the significance of clothing - it clearly and legally defined sex, age, marital status, social position, power, political status and religion.
In the late 1800’s the US had laws that prohibited African Americans and slaves from dressing above their station. The law permitted any white citizen to publicly remove (and keep) the clothing of any black person or slave that they considered to be dressed above their station.
In Tudor England, Queen Elizabeth decreed that
As recently as the 1980s, African American women
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