DRESS CODES: How the Laws of Fashion Made History by Richard Thompson Ford argues that fashion began when tailoring and sewing made it possible to wear clothes far more elaborate than togas or robes. As soon as that happened, fashion became an issue: what should society do with people who dressed above their station? Dressed to flaunt their sexuality? Dressed as the wrong gender? Dress codes such as sumptuary laws (limiting how fancy your clothes could be, depending on your status) were the response.
Ford follows the law (and the implicit rules on how to dress) down to our own time, looking at recurring themes: the desire to flaunt wealth by wearing clothes; the Puritanical impulse to dress simply; fears that looking good was a cheat code giving people and edge over more qualified rivals. And, of course, the constant efforts of people to defy or overturn the rules, which frequently turned into new and equally exclusionary anti-rules. There are added challenges for women who can’t be taken seriously if they’re too sexy or not sexy enough, and for African Americans dealing with workplace rules that limit their styles (dreadlocks and Afros aren’t something they can put on or off like a blazer so the codes control how they look outside the workplace too). Good job.
ONCE UPON NOW is a collection of short stories published on the Wattpad app built around the perennial trope of modern-day fairytale retellings. In various stories a habitual liar gets himself turned into a wooden puppet (probably the best), what starts out as The Twelve Dancing Princesses turns into a horror story about murderous sirens, college student Rob Hood robs from freshman for their own good (I’m puzzled that the female lead isn’t named something like Marion Mayde) and a friend-zoned girl finally makes it to prom (my least favorite). A mixed bag, like many anthologies.
