For hundreds of years there were strict rules about what people could wear at different times of the day and year, and at different ages. At first actual laws limited certain colors and fabrics to aristocrats; later on, social custom rather than legal documents worked to enforce conformity. My father, for instance, always exchanged his gray felt hat for a pale yellow straw one when he left for work after breakfast on Memorial Day. When he got off the train that evening, he would be surrounded by dozens of other commuters in almost identical straw hats. After Labor Day, they all switched back to felt.
For women there were even more rules. In the 1960s, for instance, fashion magazines published illustrated guides to the proper length of the new miniskirt: “Grandmother’s” hem ended just above the knee; “Mother’s” three inches above the knee, and “Daughter’s” six inches. During most of the twentieth century colors were sex-typed and age-typed from the cradle to the grave: light blue was favored for baby boys and pink for girls, and primary crayon colors were right for small children. When a little girl entered grade school, brown and tan and navy were added, and remained correct for the rest of her life. A woman with a white-collar job was supposed to wear dull, solid colors like navy blue and tan and white at work, perhaps with a brighter blouse or scarf. At home more variety was allowed, but for many years black was taboo before eighteen, and a married woman who wore a bright red evening dress after thirty might be seen as inviting scandal. Later, as she aged, she was supposed to abandon bright colors in favor of dimmed ones: gray and lavender were believed to be especially appropriate and becoming for old ladies.
Men, too, followed invisible social rules: boys wore green and blue and brown and tan and khaki, and their fathers more subdued versions of the same shades, plus gray. If you were in business, a gray, brown, or black suit, with a white shirt and a striped or small-patterned tie, was necessary, along with lace-up, highly polished shoes. In certain professions, and at certain times of year, the laws might be slightly relaxed to allow pale blue or tan shirts, and possibly even a blazer and slacks.
Outside the home, middle-class dress was formal and subdued. In the New York suburb where I grew up, a respectable woman did not use dramatic makeup during the day, or go out to lunch or into the city without gloves and a hat. If she had a white-collar job she wore a suit or a tailored dress and pumps. College students were expected to wear dresses and skirts to class; slacks were forbidden except in the coldest weather. Blue jeans and sneakers were fine for girls and women on vacation, but you could not wear them to a dinner party without suggesting that you disliked or scorned the host. The older you were, and the more formal the party, the worse the insult.
In the early and mid-twentieth century it was fairly easy to guess a woman’s age. It wasn’t just a matter of clothes: many middle-class American females stopped exercising seriously after they got married, though they might walk around a golf course once a week or play a couple of sets of tennis. Many women also had domestic help: they did not need to cook and wash and iron and mop and push a vacuum cleaner. As time passed, even if they didn’t overeat, they gradually began to bulge in the wrong places, and their hair started to turn gray. There wasn’t much they could safely do about it: most hair dyes created a glaringly fake effect, and some could be poisonous; plastic surgery was expensive, uncertain, and sometimes dangerous.
After World War II, however, all this changed. Now only the very rich had full-time domestic servants, and it was usually necessary to clean your own house and cook your own meals. It also became more and more fashionable to exercise. Medical advances meant that it was no longer obvious that someone had had a face lift. The rules about color also changed drastically. Bright colors were fine at any age, and both babies and grandmothers wore red.
For centuries, hair was an important indicator of a woman’s age. Social custom required that young girls wore it long; after marriage it was covered with a cap or scarf, and/or confined in braids or a bun: in many societies custom still makes this obligatory. Even today, long hair, loose curls, and bangs all suggest youth; though if someone is under forty, a short stylish haircut can sometimes have the same effect, giving an adolescent gamine or tomboy look.
A woman over fifty who wears her hair very short will often be thought to have stopped caring about sex, especially if her clothes are drab and baggy. If her locks are long and flowing, she will be assumed to be interested, perhaps because the majority of men, according to report, prefer long hair; she may also be typed as either artistic or theatrical. But if she works in a business office, she may have a problem, since long, loose hair on the job is thought to indicate a lack of neatness and efficiency and attention to business, as well as inviting sexual harassment and decreasing your chance of promotion. Caught between the wish for professional success, and a natural desire to look attractive, many women find themselves perpetually seeking the perfect hairstyle, to the permanent advantage of beauty salons.
Of course, clothes not only have an effect on the observer: they also influence those who wear them. In jeans and a T-shirt and flat shoes a woman can run and dance like a schoolgirl. Heavy clothes that physically constrict her will make her move more slowly and awkwardly: she will not only look but feel older and less flexible. A woman of any age who is zipped and buttoned into a heavy tight jacket and skirt or slacks may walk and sit like a more mature and more conventional person than she really is. Some people will feel uncomfortable around her, expecting criticism; others may see her as sturdily powerful, and expect help. Soft, loose fabrics and soft colors will make her feel warm and comfortable, and encourage others to expect affection and sympathy.
Shoes are important. High heels make women taller, and sometimes cause them to feel more powerful, but they also limit impulsive movement, making it difficult or even painful to walk rapidly for any length of time, or climb stairs. After a while they will start to hurt a woman’s feet, causing her to sit down at every opportunity. Then, if everyone else is standing, she will look and feel and possibly even act weaker and smaller. Since high heels also cause the hip-swinging unsteady gait that men are said to find sexy, they will encourage her to feel and act helpless, relying on charm rather than ability to get what she wants. Even worse, it may make it impossible for her to escape something that she definitely does not want. The old saying that clothes make the man is unfortunately even truer, sometimes dangerously so, for women.