Modern dress no longer reliably signals a stranger’s social identity

Evidence

There is simply very little in the modern industrialized world to prevent persons from dressing up, down or across their “appropriate” social categories. If the young wish to dress like the old, and the old like the young; if the poor wish to dress like the rich, and the rich like the poor; if the males want to “feminize” their dress, and the females “masculinize” theirs; if the lawyer wants to look like a seaman, and the seaman like a lawyer; if the Nigerian wishes to dress like an Englishman, and the American wishes to dress like a Nigerian, who is to stop them? And since there is no one to stop them, and there is a giant worldwide fashion industry to encourage them, it is hardly surprising that in the modern city, the linking of identity to costume is a very problematic activity indeed. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 457

Categorization

• XREF: Flips the preindustrial world where sumptuary laws and cloth traditions encoded status — connects to the Lex Oppia and dress-as-identity material, and to Seneca/silk immodesty panics. — connects to: For a woman, dress functions as economic currency and social standing. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1567; Seemingly superficial fashions fundamentally organize identity and social life — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 18
• DEFINE: Establishes ‘problematic’ identity linking as the mechanical precondition for Lofland’s core argument that modern city dwellers shift from appearance to location.