I t is often said that Washington, D.C., is where style goes to die. Or, as the old adage goes, that it is “Hollywood for ugly people”: a fetid swamp full of strivers, brainiacs, and nerds, nary a dandy among them. It is a supposed cesspool of sartorial sobriety. If country star Jason Aldean wrote a paean to Nashville called “Crazy Town,” someone from the DMV might just as well write a ditty about D.C. called “Frumpy Town.”

For what it’s worth, in my experience, this hasn’t been the case: The most stylish denizens of the district that I have noticed are, in fact, conservative men. The man of the Right at a think tank discussion, decked out in a crisp, navy blue suit, quirky socks peeking out from under his pant hem, and hair shining with just the right amount of product, is a sight to behold. Whether he’s wearing a Tucker-esque striped tie or a pair of well-chosen spectacles, he is miles more attractive than the progressive bros I used to encounter in lower Manhattan. There is nothing more off-putting to a discerning woman than a 40-year-old man who dresses like a 12-year-old, replete with scraggly mullet, purple sweatshirt, and skateboard in tow.

Why, then, does the stereotype about D.C.’s lack of style persist? Is it because intellectuals and other serious-minded types aren’t supposed to give importance to such silly things as fashion? When one is concerned with remedying the world’s problems, or at least seizing power, isn’t it superfluous to consider aesthetics?

Not at all. And this is one of the points made brilliantly by Richard Thompson Ford in his new book Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. In the lengthy and impressive tome, Stanford Law professor Ford says he wants to “challenge the notion that dress and grooming are trivial — an idea all too common among lawyers, scholars, and other folks dedicated to weighty matters.” An elegant man himself, Ford points out that “people who work with ideas and words tend to think of themselves in cerebral terms,” or as beings whose “essential nature resides in a non-corporeal soul, a disembodied consciousness that knows itself by its own thoughts.” But fashion is inherently about the body and implicitly sexual. It is, as the author says, “visceral and impressionistic.” Clothing offers a sense of “satisfying eroticism.” And it carries deeper meaning, having long been part of “political struggles for equality and individual dignity.”

Ford’s book is an ambitious undertaking that seeks to chronicle the many instances in which laws have been implemented to constrain fashion’s indomitable spirit — or, more accurately, to maintain social structures when freedom of expression threatened to overturn them. He writes of the “sumptuary laws” of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, which prohibited the newly wealthy merchant class from donning luxurious garb that was previously accessible only to elites. He also talks about “codes” in the more informal sense: as ways of understanding ideas or attitudes through visual representation. During what he calls the Great Masculine Renunciation of the 18th century, men did away with lavish and decorative hairstyles and heels and adopted an understated look that communicated Enlightenment ideals such as rationality and egalitarianism. As Ford explains of that era, “The frock coat and modest wig was the dress code of the partisan of individual rights and constitutionally limited government.”

Admirably, Dress Codes provides a subtle and welcome defense of classical liberalism. Fashion is likely the art form most difficult to separate from identity politics, but even when talking about contentious issues such as cultural appropriation or gendered clothing, Ford is equanimous. Tiresome activists like Megan Rapinoe, a spokeswoman for the newly neutered Victoria’s Secret, have insisted that “functionality is probably the sexiest thing we could possibly achieve.” But Ford is adamant in saying that clothing’s “primary function is to be expressive and transformative … our choices of attire are never based solely on practicality.” I adore him for noting in a paragraph about “sexualized apparel” such as corsets, hoop skirts, and crinolines that “fantasy in and of itself is not oppressive.” And while he demonstrates an understanding of why certain groups object to symbols of their heritage being worn by other demographics, he nevertheless compares overly censorious types to “religious purists,” characterizing fashion as fundamentally immune to “claims of moral prerogative.” Individuality, he says, is its essence.

Indeed, fashion may be seen as a facet of the First Amendment. It’s a concept Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell writes about in Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century. In her charming history of recent womenswear, Chrisman-Campbell describes a protest in Miami in 1970 in which middle-aged mothers and teenage girls alike convened in outrage against the imposition of longer skirt lengths. The miniskirt had come into prominence in the previous decade, and attempts by the fashion press and various retailers to shift public preference back to lower hemlines were seen as repulsively retrograde. The author writes that the protest “was framed as a free speech issue.” These women wanted “freedom of choice in their attire.”

Chrisman-Campbell’s book is full of witticisms as she elucidates such “hemline hemming and hawing.” At one point, she recounts how the trendy Ralph Lauren prairie skirt was suddenly “gone like a tumbleweed.” She profiles various styles, such as the Delphos, or Greek-inspired gown; the little black dress, perfected by Coco Chanel; and the see-through naked dress, worn by Kate Moss and accessorized with only “a pair of black briefs and a cigarette.”

Skirts’s greatest strength is its proclamation that women don’t have to dress like men to be powerful — indeed, perhaps we are reaching an era in which femininity will be seen as a positive force of its own. The padded shoulders of women’s workwear in the 1980s and Clintonian horrors of the pastel-colored pantsuit may be mercifully passé. Now that women have claimed their stake in the workplace, they no longer need to emulate male colleagues to prove their capability. And, of course, there is an army of tradwives ready to forsake the rat race altogether. Such a sensibility can be seen in new publications such as Evie Magazine, the American Woman, and the Conservateur, right-of-center offerings for the legions of women who don’t feel represented by an increasingly activist Vogue.

That women must become like men to influence the world is one of feminism’s most failed fallacies. Chrisman-Campbell quotes the fashion designer Gianfranco Ferre in saying that “psychologically, for women to adopt men’s clothing was like a promotion. But I don’t think that kind of promotion was a necessary one … If a woman has a dress that suits her, it is almost easier to wear a dress than anything else.” Indeed, “Even as they were increasingly given the option of wearing pants,” she reflects, “women continued to wear skirts.” The author calls this an “inconvenient truth,” and perhaps it does dismay the sanctimonious hordes who’d like to sic their braless, flat-heeled existence on everyone else. You know the types: the ones who constantly denounce what they call “performative femininity” while missing the point completely that feminine nature is deeply instinctive, as well as deeply desired. The fashion editor Carmel Snow is mentioned in Skirts as saying that after the travails of World War II, “Women longed to look like women again.” She added that this urge was “due to a universal change of feeling, of atmosphere.” Perhaps, post-pandemic, we are in another such era.

Both Dress Codes and Skirts are better taken as reference books than breezy beach reads. They are fashion histories written by scholars, full of the kind of information one usually finds on museum placards. And while Ford amusingly provides Austenian chapter titles such as “Sex and Simplicity” and “Sagging and Subordination,” he also drops words like “Veblenian” and “demotic” with an ease that would make Dr. Johnson dizzy. Fashion writing at this level can be arcane, exhaustive, and exhausting. It reminds me why people usually read about it in magazines instead: It’s more fun.

But of course, mainstream style magazines have their own pitfalls — some of which Chrisman-Campbell stumbles into in her conclusion. After a relatively neutral account of 20th-century trends, she suddenly invokes a litany of terms such as “body positivity,” “ableist,” “fat-shaming,” “intersectionality,” “toxic masculinity,” and the dreaded “badass.” Too often, fashion journalists assent to these notions as holy writ rather than recognizing them as the deeply divisive political concepts they are. The fashion world can be hideously out of touch. Both Ford and Chrisman-Campbell make much of recent GQ features on men wearing skirts and ponder whether this will lead to the un-gendering of dress in general. But I highly doubt whether your average plumber in Ohio is clamoring to wear a skirt simply because a GQ editor decrees it from on high. A much more salient trend to discuss would be the shameful masking of workers and servers in an age of populist revolt and the class structure this practice seeks to uphold.

For now, I’m content to stand athwart the Victoria’s Secret rebrand, yelling “stop.” It is true, as noted in Skirts, that “the arc of fashion bends toward informality.” There is far too much comfortable lingerie being hawked these days, and far too many men wearing flip-flops. It is time to brush the Dorito dust off our Zoom-zapped laps. Breaking Points co-host Saagar Enjeti recently excoriated a retiring senator for showing up in shorts at the Capitol and added mercilessly that there is “nothing more disgusting than a slob.” He’s right: Dressing well isn’t only about respectability politics but the politics of self-respect. We need a return — if not to big codpiece energy, then to anything that will save us from the scourge of athleisure. “Are yoga pants,” Ford asks, “really all that sexy?” The answer is a resounding no. So make a different choice: These days, sartorial rigor is an act of subversion.

Emma Collins is a writer based in Washington, D.C. You can find her at emmaecollins.substack.com and on Twitter at @emmacollinsfile.