Sumptuary laws tried to fix social rank to dress

Evidence

Colonial Americans apparently knew their “place” no better than the Medieval bourgeois, for in 1651 the Massachusetts General Court felt called upon to express its utter detestation and dislike, that men or women of mean condition should take upon them the garb of gentlemen, by wearing gold or silver lace, or buttons, or points at their knees, or to walk in great boots; which, though allowable to persons of greater estates, or more liberal education, yet we can not but judge it intolerable in persons of such like condition. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 297

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s published essay on moral panics over immodest/status dress: colonial American sumptuary law is a fresh primary example of dress regulation as class signaling.
• XREF: Connects to the Lex Oppia and sumptuary-law material already covered in the reader’s immodesty essay. — connects to: English sumptuary laws encoded social rank in clothing through state coercion. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 693; Bacon’s utopia barring lower ranks from fine clothing mirrored real sumptuary law. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 698