Portraiture became expressive of individual personality. Philosophy and science put humans at the center of the cosmos, displacing a religious sensibility that subordinated human and earthly concerns to the divine and supernatural. Clothing reflected new social and political ideals: the importance of the individual as opposed to the group-based statuses of aristocratic class and religious affinity.įashion in this sense developed alongside other changes in the arts, philosophy, and science: literature began to focus on individual psychology more than grand classical epics, prefiguring the transformation from epic to the novel. This kind of clothing emerged around the same time as the ideal of individualism began to emerge in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

In the modern sense, fashion involves clothing that is highly expressive it can be a sign of individual personality. The following interview, in which Ford talks about some of this research, has been edited for length and clarity:

“That developed into the ‘Black is beautiful movement’ which focused quite explicitly on the political dimensions of racial aesthetics and changed dominant norms of beauty in order to incorporate and reflect the norms of the Black community.” “It’s worth noting that the Black Panthers had a Minister of Culture, so they saw very clearly the importance of aesthetics in changing politics,” Ford says. For example, the Black Panther movement rejected the “Sunday Best” that their civil rights predecessors wore to establish a new kind of resistance.

Sartorial style can also be wielded to challenge those norms and offer new political ideals in their stead. These are just two of the many examples Ford has chronicled in his new book, Dress Code: How the Laws of Fashion Made History (Simon & Schuster, 2021), in which he argues that people have used dress codes to assert political control and social hierarchies throughout history. Wearing the same clothes as everyone else, regardless of one’s social status, was a way of espousing the period’s new values, such as sensibility, rationality, and even equality, says Ford. Dress codes can reveal social aspirations and political ideals, a new book argues.įor centuries, dress codes have had a role in maintaining specific social roles and hierarchies.īut fashion and style have also traditionally served another purpose: to express new ideals of individual liberty, rationality, and equality, according to new research by Richard Thompson Ford, professor of law at Stanford University.Ĭivil rights activists in 1960s America wore their “Sunday Best” at protests to demonstrate they were worthy of dignity and respect as they challenged the institutions that kept Black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy.Ĭenturies earlier, during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, a pared-down business suit symbolized a departure from the status-based opulence of previous aristocratic regimes.

Dress codes by richard thompson ford