Bacon’s utopia barring lower ranks from fine clothing mirrored real sumptuary law.

Evidence

Except for the garments of the fifty attendants of the scientist and the heralds of the Tirsan, the clothing of the ordinary citizens and servants of Bensalem was not described, as it was presumably not proper for them to dress in fine materials. For example, the servant who came aboard the visitor’s boat refused to accept “a piece of crimson velvet to be presented to the officer,” and, as for the officer himself, only his tipstaff was mentioned. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 698

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports article 2: even in a fictional ideal society, dress-based status stratification is reproduced without question.
• XREF: connects to: Sumptuary laws tried to fix social rank to dress — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 297; English sumptuary laws encoded social rank in clothing through state coercion. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 693; Uniform clothing in egalitarian utopias protested status stratification. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 699

Broader Connections

• Sumptuary laws tried to fix social rank to dress #expands (0.90) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 297
• English sumptuary laws encoded social rank in clothing through state coercion. #expands (0.88) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 693
• Uniform clothing in egalitarian utopias protested status stratification. #corroborates (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 699