Festive Fasion Police

FESTIVE FASHION Police

BY NIKKI HIND

As 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 !?

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.

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. 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.

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 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.

starting filing law suits against employers who enforced dress codes denying their right to wear their hair in traditional styles. The Crown Act was established in response, prohibiting dress codes from using cultural hairstyles to discriminate.

Historically, women have borne the brunt of socially controlling Rules Of Apparel. For 100s of years they were successfully used both implicitly and explicitly to keep women subordinate and reliant on men – such as clothing that: restricted women from lifting their arms above a certain height, were difficult to bend or lie down in, and generally severely restricted the physical activity of women.

Ford states that from the late Middle Ages, women’s movement, bodies and liberty have been intensely regulated through the rules of fashion; “they are expected to be decorative, but also modest – appropriately decorative to express femineity, but not so much as to be a seductress.” There was exciting, shocking and significant progress for women’s agency in fashion in the 1920s, with the Flapper Era. Coco Chanel was instrumental in redefining what was ‘sexy’ and revolutionising the female silhouette. Coco Chanel was not only, of course, female, she was also very poor; and in fact spent the later part of her childhood in an orphanage. Repressed by the class distinction of her orphanage uniform, she was bitterly aware of the oppressive rules of fashion; and was driven to break them down and redefine them in her own image.

Coco established the modern, fashionable woman as strong minded, physically capable, practical, daring and even worse – independent ! The Flapper style was all about streamlined, less constrictive designs, with flat shoes and short hair.

The relationship between women and high heels is undeniable and complex. Both the practical and fashionable origins of high heels are masculine. 13th Century Mongolian horsemen were the first to wear them, for practical reasons – keeping their feet from sliding out of their stirrups. In the 16th century male European aristocrats and royalty adopted the high heel to give them a virile and masculine edge. Women and lower-class men were legally forbidden to wear them. Women had to fight for their right to wear the Almighty Heel; which they cleverly did under the guise of needing to keep the bottom of their ridiculously cumbersome hooped dresses clean – men were up for that, its not like the women could do much social damage in those huge, heavy dresses !

Women took the high heel and ran with it ! High heels gave women some of that impressive masculine physical stature and confidence; eventually morphing into an almost necessary symbol of feminine sensuality. However, 100s of years later, women were now fighting dress codes that legally enforced the wearing of high heels for many female employees.

Fast forward to women’s present-day relationship with high heels and we are seeing a backlash against the great symbol of feminine sensuality. At a recent international tech conference, a woman who wore high heels had someone take a photo of her, and post it on twitter with – “WTF ! #nobrainsrequired.

We live in a time of incredible freedom to wear what we want, when we want, where want. With all this freedom, it’s very easy to minimize the personal

and social importance of fashion. Ford adamantly defends the importance of fashion: “The way that attire and self-presentation matters is not trivial, it’s not frivolous – it’s the story of modernity, the story of liberal individualism – this is really the engine of fashion, it’s what all these laws were fighting against … and they always lost, and fashion always won ! To think that fashion doesn’t matter, is to think that individual personality doesn’t matter and the way we understand ourselves as distinct individuals is trivial.”

We should treasure our fashion freedom and understand how best to use it.

In her TEDx talk, titled, ‘Dressing for confidence and joy’, UK Stylist, Stasia Savasuk talks about the power of ‘Inside out congruency’. Stasia’s lightbulb moment was when her, increasingly insecure, depressed, 12 year old daughter, Raisa, won the battle to literally change her pants.

When Raisa was born with a disability, Stasia had sworn that her beautiful little daughter would never feel ‘different’, never have to suffer exclusion because her disability made her look different from the other kids. So Stasia dressed her little girl in the best of the best, gorgeous little girl clothes. At 12 years old, Raisa, put her foot down, and enlisting backup from the shop assistant, she secured the pants, shirt and tie she so desperately wanted.

The moment she got home Raisa put her new pants, shirt and tie on. It changed her and her mum’s world – “Look how handsome I look mummy!”, she bubbled. Then she ran and jumped, saying, “Look how much faster I can run, and how much higher I jump now!” In her desperation to ensure her little girl didn’t look or feel different to the other kids, she had inadvertently stifled Raisa’s spirit; and now she could not believe the power that changing her clothes had on her daughter’s psychology.

Stasia now heads her own Style School in the UK, where she teaches the importance of ‘inside out congruency’. In defining inside out congruency, she quotes poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue: 61

“there is a place in you that has never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there’s a confidence and tranquillity in you.”

“That is where you go”, Stasia says. “If you can connect with that part of you and define it, then you can answer the question – who am I ? And then imagine going to your closest and only choosing clothes that connect you to that ‘Youness’. Just think of the power that you possess underneath everybody’s’ expectations of who THEY think you should be. Style isn’t really about the clothes. It’s about who you are on the inside and how you choose to show up in the world.”

Stasia’s and Professor Richard Ford’s philosophies of fashion are strikingly similar, and reminiscent of Greek philosopher, Epictetus - “Know first thyself, and then adorn yourself accordingly”

So, this year, as you slip into your Festive Best, don’t take it for granted; revel in the experience and exude some ‘Joy To The World’ !

Image: Lauren Di Bartolo | Founder and Director Australian Style Institute

About the Writer

Nikki Hind, WB40’s Fashion Editor is the founder of fashion label Blind Grit, and is an Inclusion and Diversity Media Adviser, with a passion for inclusion in fashion. Nikki is Australia’s first blind fashion designer, and has a background in PR, communications and event management. www.blindgrit.com