Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History

Join Richard Thompson, author of Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History, at the National Arts Club 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.

Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol. 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.” Even in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it—and what our clothing means.