What Does Clothing Say?
Fashion is often said to be a way for people to express their individuality. To varying extents, people are able to pick out certain things that they like that change how they are perceived by other people and their own comfort level. However, clothing also reflects and shapes the culture and class structure of society. As professor Richard Thompson explains in the BBC Reel episode, “What Your Clothes Reveal About You,” clothing conveys societal expectations, and “some of those expectations are reasonable and legitimate and some of them are unjust.”
Older eras of clothing often used draping as a status symbol. Draping uses more fabric, takes more time than simpler clothing, and is less movable, indicating a life of power and freedom from manual labor. For example, the Romans (the ancient culture I have the most information about due to taking Latin class) used togas as signifiers of citizenship while poor people, women, children, foreigners, and slaves usually wore tunics, which were much more minimal.
Despite having less of a range of fabrics, patterns, and tools compared to today, ancient dress codes could still be pretty complicated. In Ancient Rome, a kind of felt hat called a pileus was used to indicate a newly freed person. Various colors and patterns of togas could indicate different classes and life stages. In ancient Egypt, elaborate wigs with incorporated jewelry were status symbols of nobility; like drapery, they showed wealth.
Still, it was somewhat tame compared to how later tailoring and sewing expressed differences in social status. For example, the big, structured dresses and capes associated with European aristocracy significantly changed the appearance of bodies and provided lots of space to put valuable materials, communicating that rulers were different and more special than the common people.
During the 1700s, expectations of clothing opulence became more gendered as male fashion migrated to more streamlined, practical looks. This is when the business suit started to come into fashion. While this trend expressed a desire to not associate with the aristocracy, it also reflected ideas that femininity was frivolous and masculinity was serious.
As noted in “What Your Clothes Reveal About You,” during this same time period, some U.S. laws prohibited slaves from wearing formal clothing, effectively trying to preserve white supremacy in clothing signifiers. Since dress connotates power and class, it’s not uncommon throughout history for dress codes to be a matter of law.
Due to this relationship between clothing and power, many movements -think civil rights movement, suffrage, etc.- involve pushing for a deconstruction of existing dress code. Sometimes this can involve adopting formal fashion as symbols of power and dignity, rebelling against the current fashion trends, or some combination of both.
In modern times, while fashion choices are still affected by forces like gender, race, and class, clothing is relatively less restricted. Subcultures, globalization, and looser social norms all enable a wider range of acceptable clothing.
We can still see the forces of expectations and expression in new circumstances like the COVID-19 pandemic. Living at home all the time has loosened dress codes in many formal environments. However, it has also created some new expectations, instead of being able to divorce their home and work environments people now think of how their virtual meeting background appears to others. This has spawned trends like the bookshelf backgrounds, where people try to project their identity or aesthetic with the books they have. It also shows pressures to have backgrounds that appear financially successful much in the same way clothing can be a status symbol. In a way, this functions very similarly to how clothing usually works, showing how the pandemic has broken down boundaries between work and home social environment.
So what’s the takeaway? Well, as much as fashion can reflect an individual’s choices, it also shows their place within society and where they want to go. It conveys how people react to the society they’re in and how that might conflict with individual desires like freedom, comfort, or just aesthetic taste. Often, people subconsciously take in clothing messages based on cultural context without thinking about or questioning it. So, the next time you’re studying something for history, watching a political speech, or just going through daily life, you might want to consider the subtle or not-so-subtle messages that clothing is trying to communicate.
Sources
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p073zjpw/the-fashion-trends-that-just-won-t-die
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p09fr7s2/what-your-clothes-reveal-about-you
