Style

[Dust]

I read a book a while back (suggested somewhere on this forum, I believe) called Dress Codes. Interesting read. It traced a history of primarily menswear, from the finery of the kings of old, to the old money New England prep schools of today.

To sum up, the wealthy and powerful used to just show their wealth by what they wore. They put on the finest fabrics, the sort commoners of the day could not afford. But when the commoners started doing well for themselves, they simply bought those fabrics to look like the nobility. Those in power tried and failed to outlaw (over and over again) the little people wearing the stuff of the nobles. When that didn't work, men slowly moved to an understated sophistication that involved things being just so.* From fabrics and colors (or lack thereof) to fit and finish, if your dress and demeanor weren't perfect, you would be outed as one of the little people. And learning that stuff was near impossible for someone who didn't grow up around it. Which was the entire point. They could spot "new money" a mile away.

Fitting in and wearing the uniform, and more importantly doing it right and making it look like second nature, became the ultimate status symbol. One that no lottery winner is ever going to be able to just go out and buy.

These attitudes remain in force to caring degrees today. But with massive technological advances, there is some change. The Internet allows one to simply look up the (once unwritten) rules, making it harder to tell who grew up with it, and who read up on it. And clothing is more available than ever, with mass produced but widely varying items shipping from around the world in a matter of weeks at most, some available next day. Although, the cheap stuff can still often be spotted easily enough...

New technology has also made a lot of new wealth. Many of these folks simply ignored the rules. They wear T-shirts and jeans to things that used to require a jacket and tie. It's the ultimate flex and a middle finger to the old money crowd.

To those of that older mindset, a guy in a skirt will always be a big "f*** you" in their eyes. But if you can pull it off with enough confidence, it will also say "I don't need your approval." It can look like a total flex that way. But in some ways we need to have that ability to make it look like second nature, if we are going to pull it off and look like we belong there in our own right. Even if it is as a self-made man, charting our own new path...


*Women's fashion, on the other hand, took a different turn. This was enabled by the fact that tailors and seamstresses had separate guilds and were staking out separate turf in men's and women's wear. Fitting clothing to the body was seen as a different skill from draping cloth around the body, and the two groups would not let the other practice their specialty. Women's fashion, rather than focusing on perfect tailoring, tended towards keeping up with trends, and remained more varied. This also required free time, recurring access to those setting the trends, and not a small amount of money, and therefore accomplished a similar result to the subtlety of men's fashion, albeit in a different way.

[Barleymower]

Thanks Dust an information perspective on modes of dress. Commonly held beliefs are mostly fiction.

[robehickman]

I read a book a while back (suggested somewhere on this forum, I believe) called Dress Codes. Interesting read. It traced a history of primarily menswear, from the finery of the kings of old, to the old money New England prep schools of today.

To sum up, the wealthy and powerful used to just show their wealth by what they wore. They put on the finest fabrics, the sort commoners of the day could not afford. But when the commoners started doing well for themselves, they simply bought those fabrics to look like the nobility. Those in power tried and failed to outlaw (over and over again) the little people wearing the stuff of the nobles. When that didn't work, men slowly moved to an understated sophistication that involved things being just so.* From fabrics and colors (or lack thereof) to fit and finish, if your dress and demeanor weren't perfect, you would be outed as one of the little people. And learning that stuff was near impossible for someone who didn't grow up around it. Which was the entire point. They could spot "new money" a mile away.

Fitting in and wearing the uniform, and more importantly doing it right and making it look like second nature, became the ultimate status symbol. One that no lottery winner is ever going to be able to just go out and buy.

If this is correct, then the ideologies around men's fashion are grounded in elitist culture /attitudes, and people copying them without necessarily being aware of their origin. Thanks for the information.