Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History

Join Richard Thompson Ford, author of Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History, for an insightful and entertaining history of the laws of fashion from the Middle Ages to the present day and a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores and customs of clothing—rules that we often take for granted. The Renaissance era Florentine patriarch Cosimo de Medici captured the power of fashion and dress codes when he remarked, “One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth.”

Richard Thompson Ford is a Professor at Stanford Law School. He has written about law, social and cultural issues and race relations for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle, and has appeared on The Colbert Report and The Rachel Maddow Show. He is the author of The Race Card and Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality. Books will be available for purchase.