Dress Codes

A graduate of Rutgers University and New York University and a professor of sociology at The Fashion Institute of Technology, Ruth Rubinstein has been studying dress and its significance and meaning for the past twenty-five years. She is the author of Dress Codes: Meaning and Messages in American Culture (1995).

Introduction - dress in societal discourse; 19th-century theories of clothing. Part 1 Characteristics of modern social discourse: new institutional patterns of discourse spirituality; dressing the public self. Part 2 Clothing signs and social imperatives: the image of power; the image of authority; gender images; seductive images. Part 3 Clothing symbols and cultural values: wealth and beauty; leisure and political hierarchy; commerce and fashion; beauty as perfection of the physical form; the youth ideal; the health ideal. Part 4 "Publicspeak": clothing tie-signs; clothing tie-symbols; the Presidency and contemporary fashion; the personal self.