AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
By Tyne O’Connell
FASHION POLICE
Since ancient times, clothing has represented a uniform of class and gender morality, enforced by a rigid and extensive list of Sumptuary Laws. For centuries those laws had dictated the textiles, colours, silhouettes and accessories men and woman were permitted to wear, based on social rank and gender.
Tens of thousands of Fashion Police roamed the streets of European towns and cities assisted by networks of informants. Fashion police had the power to issue on the spot violent punishments and extortionate fines to enforce the sartorial precedence of social rank and gender appropriate dressing to ensure people didn’t dress above their station or cross the bounds of cis gender propriety.
A fellow of King’s College was severely punished for wearing a taffeta doublet, another gentleman was imprisoned for wearing ‘a very monsterous and outraygous greate payre of hose,’ while lawyers risked disbarment for wearing ruffs exceeding the precise measurements permissible for lawyers. For the hoi polloi however the sartorial restrictions were far more rigid and the punishments far more severe.
Fashion as a means of self expression and a mark of individuality was the preserve of royalty and the aristocracy, denied to ordinary people who risked fines, flogging or imprisoned for wearing a colour, silhouette or textile beyond their station.
Every morning ordinary people woke up and put on the uniform of their class without any consideration of expression of their true selves denied of the dreams they may aspire to.
Over the centuries, each successive monarch beefed up Sumptuary Laws during their reign, in order to increase their own magnificence and fortify the gulf between the classes.
Sumptuary Laws became even more oppressive with the embrace of Calvinism in Britain during the Reformation from 1536. Calvinism directly linked luxury, beauty and pleasure to sin. Under the Tudors clothing became central to the ethical and moral battle over the sinfulness of beauty, pleasure and the arts.
Henceforth inert objects, as well as actions, were afforded a moral value. A handcrafted, pretty shoe of fine kidskin leather was not merely luxurious, it was sinful and ungodly whilst an uncomfortable, ugly shoe was seen as godly.
Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws of 1574 were focused on the prohibition of using clothing to express individuality as well as a clamp down on women dressing as men and men dressing as women.
Queen Elizabeth I had always dreaded people of ‘the inferior sort’ as she referred to her subjects – “dressing above their station” when she came to power in 1559. Her first law passed was to reintroduce the BUGGERY ACT abolished BY QUEEN MARY THE FIRST IN 1553 .
She followed this with her new apparel laws On the 15th June 1574 Altogether Elizabeth I issued no less than eight proclamations against cross-dressing and excesse of apparel’ which expressly forbade crossdressing and clothes that risked the “feminisation of men” or the “masculinisation of women”.
Queen Elizabeth stated that crossdressing was causing ‘disorder and confusion of the degrees of all states’.
Her proclamations against “excesse of apparel,” limited what even the higher social classes could and couldn’t wear. specific laws were introduced relating to dress codes, which dictated the colours and fabrics that people were permitted to wear based on their gender, social rank and wealth.
Flamboyant accessories such as high-heeled shoes were banned, as were a vast number of “immoral” colours, furs jewels and textiles.
She further ordered her subjects to wear woollen caps on certain days throughout the week to safeguard England’s wool industry.
The confusion over these new laws resulted
With the majority of the population erring on the side of caution & wearing shapeless, dull-coloured garments of fustian to avoid crippling fines, corporal punishments or even hanging.
Fashion laws and the thousands of Fashion police came to an abrupt end in Britain and Ireland In June 1604 when King James the first, completely abolished all sumptuary laws, liberating people of all classes to express their individuality in the way they dressed and expressed themselves. Within a year ordinary people began viewing themselves, not in terms of their profession, but in terms of their dreams and aspirations..
Fashion was suddenly in the hands of every man and women across Britain and Ireland, sparking a host of new celebrity eccentrics; originals who cut a line of their own in their thinking, style of dress and lifestyle.
It was this surge in flamboyant use of apparel to express oneself that prompted Shakespeare to add the line “The apparel oft proclaims the man” in Hamlet 1607,
To his audiences it represented a double entendre referring to how clothing was now a statement of character and individuality but moreover a reference to the rising number of trans women able to assert their true gender since King James I’s abolition of Sanctuary laws.
Puritans we’re not at all pleased by the new freedoms afforded under the Stuart Reign, deriding these new fashionistas and cross-dressers, mocking their long hair, high heels and flamboyantly coloured attire, makeup and jewellery. In prolific amounts of propaganda Puritans caricatured both trans women and defiant cis women wearing doublets and breeches, their long noses buried in books.
Cross dressing was a popular way of expressing one’s individuality. So too was flamboyant and individuality of dress. But to hardline religious fanatics it represented the direct challenge against their class system and the patriarchy.
Nevertheless, between 1604 and 1640 the British and Irish enjoyed unfettered fashion freedoms that allow them to dress however they chose cocking a snook at all those who would sneer. It would be 150 years before anywhere else in Europe enjoyed such freedoms.
As for the rest of Europe, Fashion police continued to roam the streets oppressing ordinary peoples ability to express themselves through the way they dressed.
British fashion has always carried the torch for an individual boldness and flare and it is vital we keep this flame of individuality burning.