In a message dated 95-10-24 16:41:00 EDT, [log in to unmask] (Doug Lantry)
writes:

>So what schemes do all of you use when evaluating/interpreting clothing?

This may not be related but I am currently looking at corsets and footbinding
shoes as clothing that placed women in a subordinate position to men. The
articles of clothing themselves were a reaction to male aesthetics and
perpetrated by women to appeal to men. Both corsets and fb shoes played
active roles in the economic and social structure of their respective
societies, not to mention the ideological concept of what men and women were.
For more on this, look at Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. -
Adrienne