but, jackie, the clothes maketh the man--how could you know if the person you were speaking to was of your class except by the way he dressed? if a person dressed above their 'station' it was a sort of fraud or deceit. (and should be punished!)

the US is not totally classless, but it it much more so than many other cultures, but it wasn't always so, and we still have many remnants in our culture of class division.

in the past, there were all sort of rules about clothing..
'every stripe of person was there' is a old idiom. but it comes from laws that required criminals, mental defectives and members of religious minorities (often jews) to were striped clothing.. (now day, most criminal garb is orange jumpsuits, but cartoon images of prisoners still show them in stripes!)

Lace and just who could wear it, (and how much of it!) created crafts (and industries)--crochet is a famous example. crochet hooks had been used for eons to repair or darn clothing, but someone (repairing real lace no doubt!) realized you could create lace like (but not legally real lace) with crochet, and the craft took off.

(some what similar, designer drugs developed in responce to drug laws that name specific drugs.. designer drugs has similar effects, but technically were not 'outlawed')

the puritans were clothes conscious, they eskewed buttons (and only wore buckles) they held that buttons were too ostentatious, and they beleived in plain simple clothing, (but of course, it was less plain, less simple for the upperclasses!)

There was a PBS special on NY television 'a walking tour of queens" (part of series of walking tours of NY boroughs) and its mentioned that queens was home to some of the US's first 'planned communities'. it glossed over these communities were racist. No Catholics, No jews, No blacks. and many remained that way right up until civil rights legislation of the 1960!

segrigation was more open in the south, but it was just as common in part of the north, just better hidden. (and it was not just NYC planned communities that behaved this way, in many 'planned communities'a good deal of the 'plan' was to keep out 'undesirables'-see list above.

these are just 'extentions' of sumptuary laws. they are ways of 'defining' who is who in society.

go to your local blockbuster (or what ever) video store and rent a classic film 'genteman's agreement' a post WWII film about well, watch and see!

(i would like to be able to say, i am above all this, but alas, if find myself all the time bumping head on into prejudes i have acquied over the years.)


my other obsession