Appropriating elite dress let commoners claim elite social rights

Evidence

From the point of view of the elites, the most distasteful aspect of this appropriation has probably always been that he who takes on the dress may also, in the anonymous city, decide to take on the “rights.” Note the tone of righteous indignation in the following account from the London St. james Chronicle of June, 1763: A very impudent young fellow, a journeyman cabinet maker, upon the presumption of a ruffled shirt, and a gold button and loop to his hat, took the liberty of accosting two ladies of fashion in the Park last Tuesday evening, and was not a little vehement in his declaration of a prodigous passion to one of them, who he earnestly begged to favour him with an assignation. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1109

Categorization

• SEED: Civil inattention and costume as social masquerade: dressing above one’s station lets an anonymous urban commoner pass as a gentleman — directly relevant to the reader’s observer/reliability theme.
• XREF: connects to: Uniform clothing in egalitarian utopias protested status stratification. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 699