Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Can fashion police patrol our style?
KASHMIRA GANDER probes rules and customs
THEY wear backward baseball caps, have Instagram accounts and eat TV dinners off their laps (probably). The British royal family is a thoroughly modern institution, isn’t it? Well, not when it comes to kilts. A news report this week revealed makers of the Balmoral tartan – an Aberdeenslate-grey fabric embellished with black and red stitching that was designed by Prince Albert in 1853 – are still bound by a contract stating they can only supply it to members of The Firm (and the sovereign’s piper, obviously).
Such strictures have a distinct whiff of the olden days about them.
And if they are exclusive rather than prescriptive – as were many laws from history that dictated how people of different rank could dress – they do demonstrate our clothing choices are still influenced by outside forces.
And after millennia of dictating on anything from hair-coverings to the length of pointed shoes, in various guises the fashion police remain hard at work, according to Ruthann Robson, professor of law at City University in New York and author of Dressing Constitutionally, as they try to “control how race, class, gender and nationality are conveyed”.
The precedents are endless. Upper-class Grecian women were banned from wearing embroidered robes in the seventh century BC, lest they be mistaken for prostitutes.
Fast-forward to 1537 and Henry VIII was trying to weaken Irish identity by forbidding native clothing in conquered territories, including the tunic-like léine, secured with a belt, as well as limiting the amount of material used to make shirts.
“Restricting or transforming native dress has long been a strategic part of military and colonial violence,” said Jane Tynan, a lecturer in design history at Central St Martin’s School of Art in London.
But it’s not all about the power trip. Money talks, too.
The Elizabethan law of 1571 stating all men aged 6 and above who were not gentlemen should wear a cap was an attempt to boost the wool trade in Britain
And clothing materials were rationed during World War II to save supplies.
But (arguably misplaced) paternalism can play a part. There have been laws restricting magnificence among the lower orders, said Robson, designed to prevent them from going bankrupt “in a bid to look posh”.
Nowadays, rules, regulations and customs about clothing are as widespread and politically charged as ever.
The arguments for preserving decency or national security, and creating social cohesion remain.
And though Tudor sumptuary laws have been scrapped and social codes relaxed, clothing has lost none of its old symbolism.
Why, otherwise, would some supermarkets have banned the wearing of pyjamas in stores?
Why else would some establishments bar young men wearing baggy trousers with their underwear showing over the top?
Why would perpetrators of sexual assaults say “she was asking for it”? Or Slut Walk activists parade the streets in revealing clothing to question “rape culture”?
In the current political climate, though, nothing is quite as controversial as the head-coverings worn by many Muslim women, which are subject to varying restrictions or diktats across the European continent and Islamic nations.
In the West, to cover all but one’s eyes is commonly seen as threatening, alien and suspicious – hence the French ban on full veils in public, and the British ban in the witness box.
Liberal feminists, on the other hand, may see the hijab and niqab as signs of the malechauvinist oppression of women. But to many Muslims, such veiling is normal and a sign of the “modesty” they believe their religion requires.
Whichever, according to Marianne Franklin, professor in global media and transnational communications at Goldmiths College in London, such legal or social pressure is a heavy-handed attempt to promote integration.
“A woman wearing a hijab might be offended if you ask, ‘Why are you wearing that?’” she said.
She equates the sensitivity about such clothing to the British ban on Scots wearing tartan in the 18th century: now we’re a happy democracy (sort of), the passion of the crown against the kilt is spent and, said Franklin, “Tartan has become acceptable because it’s not within the geopolitical polarisation of ‘Islam versus the West’, as people would like to put it”.
You can see what she’s driving at. To her, the banning or shunning of other cultures’ customs of dress simply creates divisions. In essence, they reflect the fears and prejudices of the viewer much more than any intent on the part of the wearer, and they jar with the tolerant values of liberal democracy.
“Banning particular items of clothing indicates something undesirable,” said Franklin.
And such moves serve to politicise garments innocuous to the wearer. “A woman getting up in the morning and putting on a hijab is different from someone wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood,” she said. “Bans are deeply problematic from a rights point of view, if they punish everyday life.”
If, however, they preserve us from a ghastly royal tartan, they may not be all bad. – The Independent