Thread by @MaryRobinette

Britain. Have you learned nothing from watching us?

Let's talk about fashion and politics, shall we?

As trivial as it sounds, when someone has avoidably awful hair it is a telling detail.

There are three basic reasons to dress.
1. For utility
2. For self
3. For others.

Utility, we're going to leave alone, because it's not so much about choices as survival.

So what do I mean about dressing for self vs. others? Fashion is a language.

When you're looking at a politician with avoidably bad hair, that's a choice. What are they saying?

Fashion's goal is to demonstrate wealth. How this manifests varies by culture & era, but centers around some consistent things.
1. Conspicuous consumption vs. privilege
2. Control: Fashion serves as a gateway. It marks who is allowed to do what
3. Rebellion: Artifice vs. natural 1. Conspicuous consumption
2. Control.
3. Rebellion" src="/images/1px.png" data-src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EALQni-UcAEUMeC.jpg">

I'm going to talk about Marie Antionette for a historical context, before we jump to the modern era.

In court at this point, you wore enormous panniered dresses to demonstrate your wealth. Consider...This dress is entirely handmade. There are no sewing machines. Just people.

Everything that Marie Antoinette wore was entirely made by hand. Weaving is all hand done. Silk has to be imported from China.

The ginormous dress demonstrated that she could afford ridiculous quantities of fabric.

(Note what the workers are wearing while we're here.)

Thread, for that matter, is also handspun, and all the embroidery represents hundreds of hours of labor. Not only can she afford cloth, she can then afford to employ people to do tiny, meticulous stitching everywhere.

This dress is a conspicuous consumption of materials and labor AND there's no way you can work in it.

Marie Antoinette is making a deliberate statement with this dress that France is in a good financial state.

Spoiler: it was not.

Fast forward to 1785, where Marie Antoinette realizes that maybe she should make an effort to connect to the people.

She "simplified" her dress.

To escape the pressures of court, and Marie Antoinette would dress as a milkmaid and go to her play dairy farm. There were other people who handled all the work, she just dressed up and cosplayed an idealized milkmaid was.

Her dress? Made of cotton, imported from India.

An actual dairymaid would be wearing linen and wool, which was locally produced.

She wouldn't wear white, because that was impossible to clean. She wouldn't have ruffles, because of the additional labor and material consumption. And she probably had one dress.

Marie Antoinette had privilege. She didn't have to worry about anyone mistaking her for an actual dairymaid, so she could cosplay as one. This, among other things, angered people, because it was rubbing their noses in the fact that they were poor.

She was dressing for herself.

Fun fact: Parisian fashion magazines came out every 10 days. You had to update your wardrobe constantly.

This is fashion as a gatekeeper.

In order to be at court, where the power was, you had to dress a certain way.

Fashion served to keep people out of power.

The revolutionaries also used the language of fashion to marke themselves by dressing as students. Wool. Linen. Homespun. Very little color.

This was a way of using fashion to state an allegiance.

They were dressing for others.

So let's look at some modern parallels.

Ripped jeans: They demonstrate that you don't have to work. People won't think you're poor because the name brand and your accessories demonstrate that you made a choice.

You are cosplaying as poor.

If you're actually poor, ripping your jeans is a big deal because it might be your only pair.

If they aren't ripped the "right way", you can't wear them to work. That serves as a gatekeeper.

Avoidably terrible hair.

What this tells you is that the person has privilege. They do not have to dress to please others. They do not listen to the advice of professionals.

They dress for themselves.

Do you want a politician who thinks of themselves first or of others?