Dress Code

After the protective, even modest function, clothing is representative of identity, it can arouse desire by sublimating the human body through adornment, but it can also reveal codes and standards. Dress codes allow for integration into society or, on the contrary, for rejection, emancipation and also a claim. As a symbol of globalization, fashion, a place of subjectivation and desubjectivation, of intervention and alienation, contributes to social and physical emancipation. But clothing always takes the fold of being the signifier of gender, age, social status, religion, sexual orientation, political opinions, wealth, »subcultures«. Dress Code looks at this relationship between identity and clothing, notably through the Drag Queens of New York, the twins in Nigeria, the voodoo rituals in Benin and Togo, the Zapotec women in Mexico.