Fine, I'll admit it.
I just love fashion.
Ah, sorry.
Okay, fine.
I'll admit it. I love fashion.
I love fashion, but I wouldn't consider myself a fashion nerd in the sense that I'm not super educated on the history of fashion.
I love the technical side of fashion, for example, like how to balance the colors of an outfit or even the intricacies of how things are constructed or
how different fabrics work and how they lay on the body.
Like, I love fashion in a very current way.
You know, I love going to fashion shows and watching new collections come down the runway in real time.
I love fashion right now.
I love fashion in the current moment, but I just don't know a lot about fashion history.
And I think that this is important for me as a fashion lover because history plays a huge role in fashion.
Like when you're interested in fashion, you're naturally, whether you want to be or not, kind of interested in history because the two are heavily tied together.
We've been wearing clothes for a very long time.
And that's why I'm excited to sort of develop my knowledge about fashion history, which is why I'm so excited to be speaking to our guest today, Richard Thompson Ford.
He is a Stanford law professor, Bay Area, Palo Alto, represent.
I'm not from Palo Alto, but I am from the Bay Area.
So, you know, I feel close to him in that way. I've never met him, but I think we're going to love each other.
He is a fashion history expert. He also has expertise in many other, many other categories.
But today, I'm going to be talking to him specifically about fashion.
Specifically, Richard has dug deep into fashion as a system of power.
How the written and unwritten rules of fashion have evolved and still influence what we wear today.
He's written several books, the most recent one being dress codes, how the laws of fashion made history.
And I'm so excited to learn more about fashion today.
Beyond just like, when did they create the corsets? Where are they so snatched?
Like, I, it's more than we're going to take it a little deeper than that today and really, really become fashion nerds together.
And maybe you don't want that. Maybe you don't.
I do. So, come along for the journey. And I will welcome him in now. Richard Thompson Ford.
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We're going to have a fashion day, you know, because you have so many things that you do, so many amazing things that you do.
But I'm so curious about the fashion piece of it. Because I think a lot of people look at fashion as something that is, you know, sort of materialistic.
Like when you hear the word fashion, what comes to mind? It's like, it's materialistic. It's, you know, it's capitalism. It's this, it's that.
But, you know, there's so much more to it. What initially drew you to fashion and what particular piece of fashion was the most interesting to you?
What drew me to fashion initially was being a kid growing up. I grew up in a town called Fresno. And yeah.
No way. Oh my god, my family. My family in Fresno.
Yes, yes. I grew up in Fresno and I went to a high school, which was great in many ways. I was one of a very few African American kids there.
And right away fashion and clothing was a way to kind of navigate the social scene. It was a way to set myself off a way to, you know, exert some personality that wasn't just my race.
And I found that really useful and powerful. And so it got me interested in fashion trends. I had a preppy phase. I had a punk rock phase. You know, I mean all the stuff that kids go through.
Yes. So the, so it initially, the interest sort of started with how you could use it to sort of create, like manipulate identity.
Like, you know, it's like you can go in and, and your clothes can speak for you in some ways.
Okay. So it started there. And then how did it sort of evolve today? Sort of filling the blanks from from that initial moment of like, I love this.
This is, you know, maybe in a way, sort of an art form or a way to speak. Yeah. What then made it such a focus, I guess, in your career.
Well, a couple of things. At once personal ones professional.
My father was also a stylish person. He had great clothes and a great sense of style. Yes. You know, I wish I could have worn some of his clothes, but we were not the same size. Because he had some great stuff. He studied as a tailor.
He was a professional. He was a university professor and administrator. But he actually studied as a tailor at a historically black college at a time when they insisted that the students learn a trade.
As well as a profession in case they needed something to fall back on. So he always talked about clothing. And, but the thing I saw as a kid was he used clothing as a way to navigate his surroundings.
He was one of the only black people at the Cal State University Fresno where he worked. So I noticed that. And the way clothing mattered for him.
It was fun. And he liked it just a style, but it also had this very serious side. Yeah. And that was powerful professional side is I teach a variety of classes in law, including employment discrimination. And there are a lot of lawsuits around clothing.
People suing their employers for a dress code that for instance requires them to wear something they don't want to wear. So dress codes that require women to wear makeup or tease their hair or wear high heels shoes can be challenged as sex discrimination dress codes that for bid head coverings might be challenged as discrimination on the basic religion.
If you religion requires a head covering lots of lawsuits and the way the courts dealt with those lawsuits never struck me as satisfying. So I teach these cases to my students.
And any student who was remotely interested in fashion kind of thought well that's not what was really at stake in this case. So what the courts talking about isn't really what I think was going on and the students were right.
And so over time I thought we would be great to dig into this and get a better sense for why people are suing why employers want to have these risks codes. Yeah, that goes beyond what the typical legal analysis was you know talking about.
Do you have an example of like one of those sort of lawsuits like what about it was not satisfying like maybe give an example or like dig into that a little bit more.
And a lot of the cases there's a moment where the court says of course fashion is trivial.
You know, I mean there are a couple cases where they actually say just a vertical course this is trivial and not worth the attention of the courts except for the fact that it coincides with discrimination on the basis of race or religion or a freedom of expression claim.
But the presumption that fashion was trivial in and out itself always rub me the wrong way and I thought you know you're not going to get a good analysis if you begin with the proposition that what everyone cares about is trivial.
So that struck me as wrong here is one case in particular there was a case involving an African American woman who had a locks and the employer at a dress code against unprofessional hairstyles and so it's a dad hairstyles unprofessional you have to change your hairstyle.
Now the way the courts typically would analyze that would be to say well is the hairstyle part of her race. If it's part of her race then maybe she has a legal claim but if it's not part of her race then it's just a workplace rule and you've got to change your hair cut.
But what they left out was all the ways that that hairstyle might be important to her that weren't directly about race might have been indirectly about it but also the way it would be they didn't care about the fact that it would be impossible for her to change her hairstyle and put it back because the nature of that hairstyle.
They didn't think about the fact that what they were really talking about wasn't just you have to show up for work with a different hairstyle but you've got to change your hairstyle permanently because that hairstyle can't be switched back and forth.
Yeah, it just kind of went right over the head of the court and so there are a lot of cases involving things like that where they just seem to not get it.
I guess that is sort of part of the problem is this sort of misunderstanding of what fashion and I guess identity as a whole really is like I think I guess in this can even just be a personal opinion.
So important is it that we protect our fashion choices, our choices with our hair, our choices with our makeup, how important is that and is there any moment when we should be like okay I guess I guess I have to change like you know what sort of there is no manual for life but what is sort of your ideal.
What's the mantra what's the you know what I mean yeah I'm not against all dress codes so I think there times when the dress code perfectly reasonable it's necessary people should just comply with the dress code but I think that what.
People don't get it's what you're getting it with why is it important to the individual and why is it not trivial and when you need to navigate the world.
And maybe it's assert authority maybe it's assert competence the way you come across matters how you feel in your own skin matters and I think people who don't understand that are usually people who almost always feel comfortable because the norms and the rules are set up for them so they've never confronted a situation where someone says you know something that is kind of central to your identity.
Is is banned so a lot of the in the book I try to talk about examples a lot of them involve women where to the dress code is really working against their ability to do their job or successful at something that you have to wear this outfit and that outfit's going to make it psychologically or symbolically really hard to accomplish what you want to accomplish so your clothing is working against you and that's a problem that only certain people face in certain circumstances.
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so that's the one important moment. The second one happens in the late 1700s and it's a moment that some historians describe as the great masculine renunciation and so the great masculine renunciation is when men start to become unfashionable they start to reject fashion so men used to wear you know brocade jewels makeup you know high ranking very macho men are wearing makeup eyelash curler
blush powder wigs the whole words you know it's normal masculine fashion for you lead men sometimes in the mid to late 1700s men throughout Europe it starts in England and it's kind of spreads start to redounce all of that and you get the kind of precursor to the modern suit it's streamlined it's sober it's dark colors yeah and it's a really important symbolic thing because
political ideals are changing and so rather than society's based on aristocratic privilege you're getting the
enlightenment and the norm of industrialist this sobriety rationality that's important and so the clothing
strategy to match that like I'm practical I'm sober I don't care about fashion so this is probably
familiar right that's the typical masculine ideal now I don't care about fashion then suddenly women are
the fashionable ones and the women have the ruffles and the brocade and the jewels and all the rest of it so
they're still in one since kind of trailing behind in the sense that the modernized fashion is now this
masculine fashion that's re described as not fashion at all but just being well dressed and the women
are frivolous and fashionable and silly you mentioned that you know at one point if a woman was
wearing pants she could go to jail when did like I feel like now we can wear I mean in America
we can kind of wear whatever like there's there's really no laws I mean yeah you might have
dressed clothes at school but I feel like now it's that it is so vastly different it's like
we have so much freedom you know now we can wear anything so I'm curious about how we got from
such extreme to such extreme you know like it which is amazing happy to be here now but it's
it's there must be a lot that happened in between there yes there so several things happen
you get back you know if we go back to the late middle ages in the Renaissance there were all kinds
of laws about what people could wear some historians call them some shawry laws and they had to do
with who could wear fine elaborate clothing it was regulated according to social ranks so you
had to be of a particular aristocratic status in order to wear certain things so that people would
know on site what part of society you belonged in and you know then those kind of some shawry laws
start to go by the wayside so you know by the 1700s there's not much of that left but you still
have laws about public indecency and so those kind of pick up as the strong legal prohibitions where
the women wearing pants you know all the way up through the early 20th century would be
considered indecently dressed and therefore subject to arrest for that even though they're
no comprehensive dress codes those kind of laws continue until you get to the 60s and 70s and
in the 1970s you start to get a lot of pushback against that based on changing norms about
personal expression changing gender norms there's a lot of interesting cases involving people who
were you know what they call back then cross dressing so we're in clothing not pertaining to their
gender and they would challenge those laws as a violation of the right to freedom of expression
and as vague what counts as nail and female gender in terms of clothing I don't understand what
you're talking about so those cases started to break down enforcement of public indecency laws
so at this point they're pretty rarely enforced there are there are still on the books and there
are still cases where these laws were enforced you know sagging pants the kind of that hip-hop style
I mean there's some cities that are still enforcing bans against those as either public indecency
because you know you're showing your undergarments they passed or new ordinances banning that kind of
fashion so they're still out there but you know you're right for the most part we're not yeah we're
kind of past that what do you think about for example you know that rule against saddened pants
like that one specifically let's just dig into that for one second do you think that showing say
undergarments is is wrong no I don't and I mean a few things about that I think that when that started
it was new and shocking and new uses of fashion are often met with moral disapproval always you
know so oh my god she's wearing her underwear but you know there was a time in which a t-shirt would
be considered underwear yeah scandalous to wear yeah so there's that certainly this was
racially targeted I mean there's really no doubt that the targeting of the sagging pants in
particular was about young african-american men who were also considered to be a social threat
in other ways and that's why that was targeted yeah so there are a lot of problems with that
1000 with those kinds of laws it must be a very challenging
battle to fight when they're say these sort of dress codes that are targeted but maybe they're
they're not blatantly targeted it's a sneaky way of targeting because it's not it's not blatant
like there are certain things that I think are blatant for example like you know there are certain
hairstyles that say you know are are traditional to you know whereas say sagging pants it's like
that might be a trend within a community but it's like it's something that maybe everyone
it's it's challenging to navigate when it's not something that's obvious on paper like do you see
them say yes oh absolutely yes when it's like yeah but anyone can sag their pants I guess it's like how
how has that been thought yeah yeah absolutely when some of these sagging pants bands and the
criticism and you know during the 1990s 1980s and 1990s the criticism was ferocious
yeah you know everyone for a while is talking about sagging pants politicians you know running
for president all kinds of people talking about sagging pants like there weren't more important
issues to deal with but it was and and people of all races by the way which gets to your point
about it being challenging to confront this because you have you know a lot of black people saying
yeah the sagging pants they're you know terrible we've got to do something about that so then how
can you say it's racist and I think over time often what happens is a new style becomes mainstream
because it's seen often enough and enough different contexts that people begin to get comfortable
with it so when you first look at the sagging pants the immediate association of most people is these
are black gangsters who are also up to no good in a lot of other ways and this just is the symbol
of all those bad things and then over time people get more comfortable with for instance hip hop
hip hop goes mainstream the style starts to spread you get athletes wearing it you get people
of different races wearing it and after a while everyone starts to understand that this is just
a dothr style yeah and it's not a symbol of a social menace but I think people have to get used
to seeing in a lot of different places first and it's really hard to fight that idea when it first
appears that you know oh my god this is actually something that's quite quite threatening there's
so many different sort of dress codes for different things like there's dress codes for work and
then there's dress codes for school and then for for going out to a party and then for hanging out
with friends and then even pajamas like there are so many different sort of many little dress
codes that are peppered into our day to day life do you foresee sort of different informal dress codes
changing in the future like and in what ways do you would you predict oh that's tough okay I
know I mean it's impossible I know so the easy part is I definitely there will be informal
dress codes in the future I have no doubt about that I do not think we will live to see the day
when it really doesn't matter what you're wearing yeah I think people will care about it and there
will be lots of informal expectations and they will be informally but powerfully enforced now what
exactly that's going to look like is trickier you know I mean one thing you could kind of begin to
harsh the symbolism of certain types of clothing by looking at norms in the past and how things
have evolved so for instance the you know that this kind of a jacket is called the sport jacket
because it used to be worn for sports yeah and so there's a pretty consistent historical trend
over hundreds of years of clothing that was once sporting clothing later becoming
yeah you know business to attire and I think we still see that today yeah so that like
investment bankers who used to have a you know suit and tie dress code until very very recently
now there's no dress code in most of these banks but they've all gravitated toward something
called the mid-town uniform I don't know if there's an Instagram page I don't know if you've
seen it but you know it's a patio in your fleece and a button down cause they all wear exactly
the same thing everywhere in Palo Alto yeah every uniform is everywhere yes right there's no
dress code yeah they're all wearing exactly the same thing that's true it is interesting how humans
just we like to feel like a part of a community and I think that the you know the whole
pategone you've asked in the that whole uniform is it's no more like effective than a North Face
vest but is but it is that is the uniform it's interesting that you say that you never can imagine
like you you don't think there'll ever be a time where it doesn't matter what we're wearing
and that tells me that it's because it it holds more value than I think
we think it does historically what is like the through line why is it so powerful like why because
it just shouldn't be that big of a deal when you really break it down it's like you're just
staying warm covering up your like why does it matter so much yeah I think it matters because
clothing at least since this moment that I described as the birth of fashion yeah you know when
when tailoring really takes off it becomes a way in one sense to transform the human body and
this was really clear in the you know let's say in Tudor era England when Queen Elizabeth the
first would wear these magnificent gowns and they were architectural you know they had shoulders
that were sculpted and skirts that were you know you'd built out and a lot of the fashion in that
period of time for both men and women had these characteristics if you were in the elite yeah and
people commented that she looked otherworldly she looked super human and that power of fashion I think
is never going away so yeah that and then fashion allows us to immediately make associations with
other periods of history other people other groups so you can communicate an enormous amount
in a split second by what you're wearing including communicating things that you wouldn't want to
say out loud so fashion lets you do all of that it's and I think that's why it's extremely powerful
and as long as we are embodied flesh and blood human beings you know until we can upload our
consciousness into the cloud or something yeah that's good it better yeah it's so true this
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it's important for people to pay attention to fashion or do you think
it's sort of like do you think it's optional I think it's not optional when we speak of fashion
in the broadest sense yeah so when we're talking about do you care what you're wearing I don't
think that's optional and I think people who say that they don't care are not self-aware or not
being honest I'm sorry some people will be upset at me for saying that but I don't I don't buy it
yeah I think that they pay dress to look as if they don't care about fashion yeah and that is
also a choice exactly well that's a great point for example like Mark Zuckerberg wears a great
t-shirt you know really famous example and yeah people would say you know come on fashion doesn't
matter look you know the CEO of a billion dollar multi-billion dollar corporations which just
wears a great t-shirt yeah but when you hear what he says about why he said something like this
yeah it's not a direct quote but yeah I wear this great t-shirt because if I wasted my time thinking
about trivial things like fashion I wouldn't have time to do my job to be the best CEO of Facebook
and I would devote all my time to that yeah so what's the great t-shirt now is it a matter of
indifference no it's a symbol of the work ethic right and so if you're not wearing a great t-shirt
if you look like you care about fashion that suggests you're wasting your time on trivial things
when you should be working yeah and people actually said that so when the she was in the CEO of
Yahoo! Burissa Mayor got a vogue fashion spread you know she's a fashionable young woman yeah
she's of course she's gonna do it it's lots of fun people in Silicon Valley said look at her
she looks like she's going to a party around vacation while everyone else is working so people do
care yeah you know and there's just another it's like an inverted dress code at this point if you
look like you care now that's a problem yeah what would you say to people who get really like I'm
remembering even like Miley Cyrus for example when she came out and all of a sudden she's like
you know wearing really revealing clothes and like you know whatever and and everybody was up in
arms like as though she killed their family what are your thoughts on that like what
people get really just angry about what other people wear
mm-hmm number one why do you think that is number two is that healthy or no I think I think it's no but
I want to hear you elaborate I think it's often unhealthy and I would say I think it's
for yeah sometimes it's inevitable and sometimes people you know dress in order to provoke a
response and then it's not surprising that they are successful in doing that but I think that
often it's unhealthy particularly when it's directed at women so I'm going to come back to this
point about the way women are forced into catch 22s around their entire constantly and
um criticized no matter what they do and so I think a lot of women when they dress in a way that
might be considered provocative are trying in an odd way to take control of the gender dorms
around clothing you know that they've lived their lives being pushed and pulled in these directions
you know either you're too front be or you're too sexy your outfits boring or it's slutty it's
back and forth and they're just like you know I'm just gonna wear something where there's just no
argument about it um and call me what you want do you think that it works yeah that's a hard one
yeah I think it can work for some women if they are you ready for the reactions but I do think that
often it doesn't work because you don't opt out of the judgment I mean that's also not for you
at the end yeah it's still not for you right you know right it's like I think that that's what's so
unfortunate about is it it's it's like it's almost like you know you can't win right because it's like
if you you're like you know what this is like and I want to empower myself so I'm going to go
ahead and do this but then that doesn't do it either it's almost like I think ultimately
to set yourself free and maybe it's not the simple but I'm curious to hear your your thoughts it's
like maybe to set yourself free you have to do something that's just completely a reflection of
your personality whatever that is so it can't it not any extreme necessarily but it must just be
the truest representation of you so it's like if if somebody's dressing as an act of rebellion but
then they're like oh this doesn't even feel like me then it doesn't work it's almost like the
biggest act of rebellion is to dress however what is the most truly you maybe I don't know yeah it's
so I I hear what you're saying about how it's like there's nowhere to win right that you're
reacting so if you're reacting to something that you're not in control you're you're now in a
responsive posture to some other thing patriarchy whatever the male gaze all of that and I do think
people are often buffeted back and forth by that kind of thing I mean I would
love it if there were a way for people to dress only for themselves but I have to say I skeptical
that that's possible I think yeah I completely agree I think one is always dressing for other people
and to communicate something and maybe the true only to the extent it's a solution solution is to
recognize that and decide what you want to say decide what you want to communicate with your
clothing now that doesn't solve that doesn't help women out of the catch 22 and I think that's a
better honestly a political activism I mean that's a case where there needs to be sustained pushback
against unfair gender expectations around clothing what do you what do you think about sort of the way
that we're consuming fashion today compared to how we used to consume fashion you know a few hundred
years ago I mean it's definitely different yeah because it used to be like what you'd buy
a new pair of shoes every five years I mean who knows like how is it how is the way that we consume
clothes different back then versus today I mean I think it's obvious but I'm curious the sort of
details of that for a long period of time any fashionable clothing was custom made and therefore
very expensive and only available to the elite or people with lots of money so you get mass-produced
clothing in the 1800s the Brook Brothers suit is one of the first examples of mass-produced clothing
so now you're not going to the tailor and having something made you can buy it in a catalog it's
cheaper Europeans commented on the way Americans were also well dressed
because this was the first country where you had this mass-produced cheap clothing everywhere
everyone's wearing a nice waistcoat so one person said a mob in the United States is a mob
and silk waistcoat yeah because we're able to afford this shoes were still really expensive so
you mentioned shoes and that's where you know like the term well well healed comes from because
you know your rich if you've got nice shoes that those weren't easily mass-produced and so our real
disposable attitude toward clothing I think it's pretty recent yeah and you know that disposable
attitude for everybody is opposed to just the very very wealthy fashionable set who would have a new
you know follow the new spring fashions and would have you but it's a tiny sliver of the population
yeah now almost everybody can do that if they go to some fast fashion store where they're copying
the high fashion clothing at a very low price point yeah and you know as to how I feel about it
there's a lot of ways involved yeah it's not great for the environment to affect the fashion
industry is one of the larger contributors to yeah to the environmental pollution and degradation
and the labor practices used in some of this cheap clothing are appalling so there's an argument
that it would be better both in terms of social justice in terms of environmental health if we
had a different attitude toward fashion where we kept things longer I know I'm so about that
right now where I'm like by one really good thing instead of five really shitty things go in like
you know and and make it a part of your uniform in a way and like you know if I'm with
excess rising and like do other things I because I I was such a consumer you know I was like I
love fashion I need to have everything this is the cheaper option like in high school I was ordering
fast fashion stuff all the time I you know then eventually I found thrift shopping and I was like
this is actually more fun and then because thrifting was not cool when I was little and then
now going to the thrift store is like cool isn't that wild yeah yeah it was not that way when I was
a kid I actually do think it's kind of cool though that now it almost feels like fashion is less about
it's about having a cool outfit period people are less concerned about what brand is this what brand
is that it is more about at least with Gen Z like I don't know it's more about like just wearing a
cool outfit because thrifting is cool it's almost like a weapon now to be like I thrifted this
you know so it's interesting to see that it's becoming almost in some ways more of something to
brag about when you got something for a deal and it's cool and I still look cooler than you like
that's the flex now but maybe that's just a smaller because I still do think that the big designer
brands and all these you know expensive sorts of things still have societal impact but maybe we're
going in a direction where it's lessening a little bit I also think it's lessening a little bit
because there's a lot of fake designer that looks pretty real so it's like how is anyone to know
it do you think that designer things have less of a sort of importance now yeah I think this is
something that the big fashion brands are really worried about yeah and and they're spending a
lot of money on lawyers to stop these fakes from circulating yeah you know but they are worried
about it and it's interesting that if some of the fakes are so some of them are so good they're
indistinguishable from the real thing even if you take it apart some of them are made in the same
factories so it actually is identical it's just that the factory ran off some extra ones after
they made the the things for the brands so it's an issue and I still think the fashion brands have
got a lot of cultural clout and it's interesting how they navigate that so I'm thinking of Gucci
and their collaboration with Dapper Dan I don't know do you remember um so Dapper Dan during the
the 80s and 90s was the hip hop tailor up in Harlem who made clothing for you know artists
like Eric being rock hem and salt and pepper and they were you he used fake Gucci and fake Louis Vuitton
fabrics yeah up to make these jackets and and and suits and clothing is really cool stuff yeah
and they suit him you know of course they did they suited for trademark infringement and they put
them out of business but now he's collaborating with Gucci and so you know it's kind of come back
full circle and it's so they're trying to figure out you know now they realize this stuff was
cooler the most of the stuff that we put out officially totally and we want to be associated with it
yeah it's always been true that part of the status of fashion has been about the expense and part
of it has been about Savoia Fair you know yeah what do you know do you know what to wear when
you know what's appropriate back in the day it was all about you know the appropriateness of
clothing so that you would know that someone was from the wrong social class if she wore
diamonds to a garden party because you know a truly elegant woman would never wear diamonds
except to the theater or at night and she'd know where something else so there's this kind of
thing but I think you're thrifting example to go back to that it's still got a little element of
that without all the class knob or where what's cool is to know how to put together a cool outfit
not just to have enough money to go and buy out the Gucci boutique yep it's almost like
that's what I do love about sort of that
section of like fashion right now is it is more about do you know how to put something together
that's cool and feels different because it's so saturated and everyone's wearing the same thing
it's almost more about having something that no one else has than it is about at least in some
corners of the fashion world but yes more about that than it is about having the hottest new
you know designer bag because it's like anyone can get that whereas not just anyone can find like
this random Betsy Johnson pair of heels from 1996 like you just like only you have those and that's
almost a currency of its own what is sort of your wish for the world when it comes to our human
relationship to fashion where would you like to see it changing evolve and what does that look like
and it can also be like I know that this needs to change I don't know how but just anything
the answer can be whatever you want the answer to be but I'm just curious what what a bright future
looks like in your eyes I'd love to see a world where people can dress in the way that empowers them
I don't know understanding that you've got to navigate and it's a social relationship you know
fashion is is a relationship with other people so it's not all about the individual but
wear dress codes and expectations and norms around fashion that are designed to produce hierarchies
that are designed to reinforce class snobbery that are designed to put women on that catch 22
treadmill are those are gone and what's left is a landscaping which people can use clothing
in order to you know express themselves their connections with other people in a variety of ways
I don't want to say every any way they see fit because that's not realistic yeah but
that there are a variety of ways where people can find a way to be comfortable and and I'll throw in
you know sustainability so maybe better clothing but less of it yeah ops took the words out of my
mouth this was amazing thank you thank you oh my god I learned so much today I learned so much that's
great this was really awesome
