Fashion is a pure outline of culture: what's in, what's out, what's fashionable, what's unacceptable—it's an instructive way of discussing how culture works. And Friedman is part-right: a code governs our days, but it is not the laws of fashion that mogul over us. Since Peter the Great ordered his nobles to cut their beards (to appear more Western) the influential have sworn that culture is the great orderer of human life. Change the culture—change fashion—and you change everything. That's the theory. But the dress code is a representation of power, not the cause. The people who speak of fashion as an arbiter of influence miss the point. They believe symbolic performance is power. It is not. Economics is.
THE CODE ABIDES
Friedman goes on to dissect the hypocrisy and inanity of the arbitrary nature of dress codes, "How can the sergeant-at-arms, the chief law enforcement and protocol officer of the House, deem such garments inappropriate" when the First Lady and the President's daughter wear them? Friedman describes "a dress code revolt" which has been erupting over the "last several years." Friedman specifically cites the ban on airplane employee leggings, the "male skirt rebellion," and several other incidents: the case of the woman whose flat shoes at work led to a Parliamentary committee, and the curious case of Kansas State Senator Holmes who denounced women who wore low-cut necklines and miniskirts.
The obsession with culture as central to power is a fixation shared by centrists and conservatives alike. Every time a centrist brings up Fearless Girl as a performative talisman, they are invoking the mystical agency that cultural symbols are supposed to have. Alt-right Twitter is filled with clotted-together man-shapes made of resentment and pale yeast. They seem to spend most of their energy engaging in liberal-triggering acts: dunking themselves in tubs of blood or drinking milk on camera, or God knows what else. These displays effect the world as much as the cast of Frasier currently controls the black market: not at all.
THE STATUTE OF DAVID
Nobody is more enthralled with the idea of culture-as-power than conservative word-sayer David Brooks. As the podcast Chapo Trap House has pointed out, Brooks has a singular obsession: the glory of upper-middle-class values—and, more importantly, how he can use these bougie signifiers to hammer them poors. It's the first thing he thinks about when he rises from his Egyptian-cotton bed to when he falls asleep dreaming of St. Barts. He wrote a whole book about it, Bobos in Paradise.
SAY YES TO THE DRESS
Might they feel anxious, or have "different jobs" because there are no factories, fewer good jobs, and grinding student debt? Imagine there's a Martian who can only see soccer balls but not the human beings kicking then. Then ask him to describe a soccer match. That's how Brooks writes.
Brooks and his crowd believe culture decides economics. It makes sense that modern conservatism follows this doctrine. It allows them to engage in their two favorite practices: shaming the weak, and not challenging capital. If culture is the governor of social life—if being rich and successful was just a matter of aping your betters and wearing the right clothes—that would show that economic injustice was a pipe dream.
In the real world, economics largely dictates culture, not the other way around. Always has, always will. Economics is scarcity which is control which is power. Power flows from the control of resources. Conservatives are agents of the status quo, and so the machine of power is largely invisible to them, just as oppression is not their direct concern.
THE TIES THAT BIND
Friedman's feature is concerned, mildly, with the questions of what a dress code is, and who demands it. But this confuses the understanding of how dress codes work, and how culture works in relation to power. In Friedman's story, it's instructive that the instigators of change are two elite women: Ivanka and Melania.
That is how it works. Dress codes exist because institutions have concentrated might. This influence shoots out, issues its edicts, extends outwards, like a bridge from mainland to island. These establishments order how the rest of the world chooses to dress. Dress for success? Please. Success dictates dress. "Don't you know about the new fashion honey?" Billy Joel once asked us, "All you need are looks and a whole lotta money." The philosopher was too pessimistic: looks are not really required.
Why does the dress code of the people's house matter? Why should any Speaker of the House have a single solitary say in how women dress? Why, because Congress puts a wall between itself and the citizens. It is the standard of lobbyists and attorneys who dictate the dress code, not ordinary people.
