The Fold Speaks First: A Grammar of the Pocket Square
The Smallest Argument in the Room The pocket square occupies perhaps four square inches of visible real estate. It emerges from a slit in the chest of a jacket that…
The Given Garment: On the Pallium and the Cloth That Confers
The Garment You Cannot Choose Most garments can be acquired. You find them, buy them, inherit them, construct them from available materials and available desire. The history of dress is…
Dressed by Decree: The Sumptuary Laws and the Politics of the Clothed Body
The Law at the Wardrobe In 1337, Edward III of England issued a proclamation forbidding anyone below the rank of knight from wearing fur-lined garments. In 1363, Parliament refined the…
The Rough Cloak: On the Philosopher’s Dress and the Conviction It Carried
The Uniform of Refusal In Athens, you could identify a philosopher by his cloak. Not by the quality of his argument, not by the school he attended, but by the…
The Colors of the Bound: On Livery, Loyalty, and the Clothes That Confessed
The Readable Body Before the self became a private project, the body was a public declaration. In medieval Europe, to dress was not to express; it was to announce. The…
