The Renaissance-era Florentine patriarch Cosimo de Medici captured the power of fashion and dress codes when he remarked, 'One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth.' Dress codes evolved along with the social and political ideals of the day, but they always reflected struggles for power and status. In Tudor England, silk, velvet, and fur were reserved for the nobility, and ballooning pants called 'trunk hose' could be considered a menace to good order. Merchants dressing like princes and butchers' wives wearing gem-encrusted crowns were public enemies in medieval societies structured by social hierarchy and defined by spectacle. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.Ī 'sharp and entertaining' ( The Wall Street Journal ) exploration of fashion through the ages that asks what our clothing reveals about ourselves and our society.ĭress codes are as old as clothing itself. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice.

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