Rising merchant elites embraced sumptuary law rather than opposing status distinctions

Evidence

Where they were in control, as in Colonial America, they took great pains to institute costuming regulations quite similar to those extant in Europe. What this group wanted, rather, was merely to display an elite status which they felt, by right of wealth, they deserved. However, as long as the major economic base of the larger society was agricultural, and as long as the aristocratic elites controlled this base, the princes of commerce could be held at bay. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 309

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Shows status-boundary enforcement is not aristocratic alone; merchant-run Colonial America recreated European costume laws, corroborating the class-signaling thesis of the dress article.