Abstract
To nineteenth-century writers the phrase "clothes make the man" was no empty cliche, but a profound and perceptive truth about the workings of society. For Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, clothes were not mere aesthetic ornament, but emblems of society's hierarchy and symbols of the spirit. "Man's earthly interests," he observes, "are hooked and buttoned together and held up by clothes."1 Not only could clothing transform a person's appearance, it could influence the actions and attitudes of both the wearer and the viewer. As Thackeray demonstrates in his Paris Sketch Book of 1840, it is Louis XIV's dress that transforms a "little lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two" into the magnificent, imposing Sun King. With shrewd insight into the influence of dress, Thackeray notes that Louis's sartorial splendor both enhanced his own self-image and impressed his viewers.2 Garments, in other words, signal to the world the role the wearer may be expected to play and remind the wearer of the responsibilities of that role, its constraints and limitations. That dress acts as a means of communication is a view
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