Overt dress difference made anonymity unachievable in the preindustrial city

Evidence

The distinctiveness of personal attributes in the non-industrial city makes it almost impossible to evade one’s class (or other status ranking), whether in a strange locale or in a crowded city street. Individual or group anonymity is unachievable. In a city where the elite wear fashionable clothing and the poor mere rags and tatters, dress at a glance advertises one’s class position. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 259

Categorization

• XREF: Direct building block for the reader’s Lofland-Cole arc: preindustrial dress foreclosed anonymity, whereas Cole’s protagonist suffers the opposite modern condition of total anonymity — loss of legible social identity.