SOURCE: Perrot, Phillipe. “The Imperatives of Propriety.” In Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Richard Bienvenu, pp. 87-123. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt, originally published in French as Les dessus et les dessous de la bourgeoisie: une histoire du vêtement au XIX^e siècle in 1981, Perrot examines rules of fashion as outlined in nineteenth-century manuals of etiquette.

“Clothing is to the body what education is to the mind. Clothing consists of similar elements for everyone, yet it varies according to the taste, attitude, order, care, elegance, and distinction everyone brings to it.”¹ In cases where appearances are concerned, as in many other domains, social characteristics matter only in their opposition to others, that is, when they are perceived as being different. This raises the question of the respective positions of these differences and their...