Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History

Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. 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. Even in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it – and what our clothing means. People lose their jobs for wearing braided hair, long fingernails, large earrings, beards, and tattoos or refusing to wear a suit and tie or make-up and high heels. And even when there are no written rules, implicit dress codes still influence opportunities and social mobility.
Richard Thompson Ford, professor at Stanford Law School, will be presenting his latest book. In Dress Codes, he presents a history of the laws of fashion from the middle ages to the present day, a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores, and customs of clothing – rules that we often take for granted.
He will discuss it with Marie Mercat-Bruns, an Affiliated Professor at the Sciences Po Law School and member of Sciences Po’s Gender Studies Programme Scientific Committee.
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©Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Lady Elizabeth Murray (Public Domain)