Dress Behind Bars: Prison Clothing as Criminality

Abstract

Design and cultural historians searching for academic texts on uniform are likely to encounter a huge literature on the subject. There are many books on uniform, but it is rare to find a focused analysis of uniform clothing from a specific period, or work that theorizes the social role of regulation dress. Even fewer books situate the emergence of uniform clothing within the visual economy and industrialization of nineteenth-century modernity. Not only were uniforms key to the development of mass-produced clothing in Europe, they were also central to the social education and reform projects associated with modernity. During the past two decades, fashion has gained increased attention within cultural history, cultural studies and sociology, but studies of uniform clothing are less conspicuous. Twentieth-century fashion surveys tend to skip the two world wars, to focus their attention on pre- and post-war styles. War may shrink the fashion market, but military requirements also expanded the production and consumption of military and service uniforms. As regards military uniform, books for hobbyists and enthusiasts dominate the market, such as the illustrated military histories published by Osprey. Few books explore the history and politics of occupational clothing. Uniforms worn by prisoners, nurses, postal workers and police might deserve more considered analysis, but it has fallen to costume historians to trace these histories.1 In the 1980s, Nathan Joseph's sociological analysis of uniform drew attention to the communicative character of uniforms,2 but it was Brian McVeigh's study of regulation dress within the Japanese education system that revealed ‘uniforming’ as a visible marker of social status3 While Jennifer Craik's ambitious survey of uniform explores relationships between their overt and covert meanings,4 stories of subversion tend to dominate the analysis, leaving the original contexts for uniform design under-researched.