As long as people have expressed themselves through clothes, those in positions of authority have tried to dictate what we can wear.
The ancient Romans restricted the color purple. Louis XIV decreed the heel heights of the members of his court in 17th century France. Recently, schools throughout the US have banned hoodies.
A new book, “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History,” by Richard Thompson Ford, out Tuesday, explores the history of sartorial mores and statutes throughout the years. Here are four of the most regulated, controversial and debated fashion items throughout history.
High Heels
When Persian horsemen first rode into Europe in 1599, their heeled shoes caused a sensation. “The heels were designed to fit into a stirrup,” said Ford. “And because these equestrians were masculine and virile and very impressive, European men wanted to adopt their high-heel shoe in order to get those same associations.”
As the elevated style began to trickle down to the hoi polloi, the aristocracy responded by making their heels higher and higher — and less and less practical. In the 1670s, the foppish Louis XIV issued a decree saying no one could don heels higher than the king, and restricting his cherished red-soled pumps to members of his royal court.
Women — except for a few fashion mavericks — avoided the macho high heel until the 18th century. As social revolution swept Europe, men gravitated toward more sober footwear, and women’s shoes got skinnier, taller and more decorative.
“The high heel becomes associated with women and femininity,” Ford said.
Once a symbol of power, high heels have become, in recent times, a sign of repression for some women — inhibiting movement, crushing their feet and turning them into ornamental objects. Women have sued companies that require them to don pumps at the office, and actresses have staged protests at events that mandate stilettos on the red carpet.
Gold Hoop Earrings
In the summer of 1416, police arrested a woman identified as “Allegra, wife of Joseph” in the Italian city of Ferrara. Her crime? Appearing in public without her earrings. After all, her gold hoops identified her as Jewish.
When Jewish families began migrating to northern Italy, by the 1200s, the new arrivals clung to their earrings. Yet most women in the region eschewed jewelry and by the 1400s, many Jews followed, ditching their gold hoops. That alarmed the religious clergy.
“The authorities were worried about the ease of assimilation of Jews and non-Christians into Christian society, and wanted to set up sharp distinctions so that people would know a Jewish person on sight on the street,” Ford said. “And so there were laws that required [Jewish women] to wear earrings” — — specifically gold hoops.
Gold earrings “had this connotation of the exotic of the sinful,” said Ford. Prostitutes in ancient Greece wore gold, and many European cities still required female sex workers to wear jewelry. The new law “reinforced a narrative that Jewish people were by their nature sinful and should be avoided.”
Ironically, these regulations surrounding gold earrings made them more enticing to the ladies who weren’t supposed to wear them. “This is one of the things that is fascinating about fashion,” said Ford. “Political and religious authorities try to pass dress codes in order to promote certain things and suppress others, but meanwhile fashion is operating to encourage people to express their own unique personality.”
Eventually, fashion wins out.
Kilts
In 1746, after years of battles, the English finally defeated Jacobite rebels fighting for Scottish independence. To consolidate power and quash further rebellion, British Parliament passed a series of acts disbanding Scottish armies, taking away their weapons and banning “Highland Dress,” including the kilt.
Those caught donning the garment — or even just wearing plaid — would be thrown in jail for six months without bail. A second infraction could see the offender shipped off to one of Great Britain’s overseas plantations for seven years.
The so-called Tartan Act was a disaster from the start. Instead of deterring Scots from wearing these nationalistic threads, the order made the kilt more popular than ever.
“First, it wasn’t clear that before this law was passed that the kilt was a widespread garment in Scotland at all,” Ford said.
“After it’s banned, people start to redouble their associations with it. Eventually a group of elites form a society that’s dedicated to reviving this lost Scottish tradition that the British came in and destroyed.”
The act was repealed in 1782, but the kilt has remained a potent symbol of Scottish — and British — pride.
“Even the Queen has her own tartan,” Ford said.
Hoodies
The humble hoodie — a utilitarian sweatshirt first worn by outdoor laborers in freezing upstate New York — has become a status symbol in Silicon Valley (thanks to slovenly tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg), a weaponized threat to school faculty, and a #resistance uniform for Black Lives Matter protesters throughout the country, after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot while wearing one in Sanford, Fla., in 2012.
“The right hoodie is, in the tech world, the modern equivalent of the suit,” said Ford. “It communicates industriousness, seriousness, sobriety. But unlike the suit, it only works for white men.
“A black man wearing a hoodie looks like Trayvon Martin, who was shot because people apprehended him as dangerous and threatening.”
Since Martin’s death, schools throughout the country have banned hoodies for various reasons — some say that the hood obscures the wearer’s face, not allowing authorities to identify any outsiders coming into the building. Other schools have banned the garment because of gang violence or to prevent kids from listening to their AirPods during class.
In 2015, an Oklahoma Senator caused an uproar when he put forth a proposal that many believed would ban hoodies in public. (He later said that he did not want to ban hoodies but other hooded garments.)
Despite these efforts, the hoodie is more popular than ever. According to the global fashion platform Lyst, searches for hoodies rose 71 percent from late 2019 to late 2020, while popular resale site The RealReal reported a 78 percent surge in interest in the garment.
It just goes to show you that fashion has political stakes, said Ford.
“That’s why people continue to pass laws and develop rules regulating it,” he said, “and why others have struggled to resist and overturn those laws and rules.”
Zoot suits
On June 4, 1943, a group of 200 sailors stationed in Los Angeles went hunting for young Mexican-Americans wearing “zoot suits,” beating them up and stripping them of their cartoonishly broad-shouldered jackets and baggy pants before throwing the clothes into the fire.
Many leaders cheered these sailors for their vigilantism. “The zoot suit has become a badge of hoodlumism,” LA Councilman Norris Nelson would say a few days after the violence. “If we can arrest people for being under-dressed, we can do so for being over-dressed.”
While none of the proposals to ban the zoot suit were passed into law, zoot suit riots popped up across the Golden State and in places like Detroit and Harlem.
Authorities rationalized their anger toward the zoot suit by saying that it used an excessive amount of fabric during a time of war, when the country faced rations. “But honestly, the real motivation was that it had this kind of socially threatening aspect, especially because it was worn primarily by minority groups,” Ford said.
Plus, jazz musicians and other countercultural figures who adopted the zoot suit seemed to be making a mockery of white male dress codes.
“It’s a big voluminous suit, so it’s a standard business suit, but exaggerated and made flamboyant,” said Ford. “It’s a mocking way of wearing the standard business suit. So it’s subversive and people took it that way, and they were angry about it.”
While the zoot suit died out as a fashion statement, its spirit of rebellion continued to influence other stylish subcultures, particularly the hip-hop community — whose logo-laden, larger-than-life wares share the zoot suit’s defiant swagger.
“There’s a similar vibe,” said Ford.
Hijabs
Many women cover their hair for religious purposes: Catholic nuns, strict Orthodox Jews and, most controversially, Muslim women.
French schools and Mediterranean beaches have in recent years banned the hijab, the head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women, saying that it is conspicuously religious at best and misogynistic at worst.
“The idea that the hijab represents a particular traditional and socially limited role for women — there’s some truth in that,” said Ford. “But at the same time, that narrative was used and exploited by Western colonial powers … and often used as an excuse for Islamophobia and bigotry.”
The Assyrian Empire required married women to wear veils as far back as 1200 BC. Christians continued to cover their hair well into the 15th century. But by the late 19th century, European colonizers began to view women who covered their hair in the Middle East as backwards. In 1923, Egyptian feminists called for women of all religions — Copts, Christians and Jews — to doff their headgear, inspiring feminists in majority-Muslim countries, too.
By the 1970s, many Middle Eastern countries no longer required the veil; some, like Turkey and Iran, limited or even banned it, as a way to “modernize.” Yet many women — religious or no — resented being told not to wear something just as much as having to wear something.
“Some women wearing the hijab do it to signify their religious devotion,” Ford said. “But for others it’s a statement of postcolonial resistance to Westernization and against Islamophobia.”
Ford added that the hijab has become such a lightning rod because it is worn by women.
“We can’t leave the gendered aspect out … Women are seen as the symbols of the community or the symbols of the faith. They’re the ones who wear the visibly distinctive clothing.”
And the ones with the most complicated dress codes.
