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From boarding school khakis to MAGA-red caps, clothes often carry meanings that go far beyond the wardrobe.
Picture: iStock
Growing up, the phrase “the clothes maketh the man” was an injunction to eschew jeans for chinos and T-shirts in favour of collared shirts.
There’s a lot of truth to it; try getting an upgrade on a flight when you’re in slops, PT shorts and a slogan T-shirt, versus a suit and tie, or going to the boss to wheedle an increase.
But just as the clothes we wear tell the world a little about who we want to be seen as, we’ve got to be careful of being condemned by association.
For a while in the ’80s, khaki clothing – the old tough cotton pants and button-up shirts beloved of farmers and boarding school pupils alike, was rendered toxic because of its association with rightwing extremism.
The Brits had Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts; the Germans had Ernst Rohm’s Sturmabteilung Brownshirts.
South Africa had Eugene TerreBlanche’s AWB in khaki.
As a journalist in the early ’90s, it was a strict rule not to go out on assignment wearing military surplus clothing, lest you be mistaken for a member of the security forces.
At the same time, many of us writer types wanted to be mistaken as cool press photographers and deliberately wore the sleeveless cotton and canvas gilets loved by fishermen, hunters – and press photographers stuffing their lenses into pockets that normally took shotgun shells.
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It marked those of us who did it as poseurs in the newsroom and earned us the derision of our seniors, who literally had been there and done that without seeing the need to get the T-shirt, but it was harmless – and most of us outgrew it.
Not all articles of clothing are so forgiving.
Shemaghs and keffiyehs can be problematic for the unwitting: the Saudis and Emiratis wear red checked ones – while the black checked version has become synonymous with the Palestinian cause.
Red hats are another, thanks to the unfailing efforts of Donald Trump’s drive to Make America Great Again.
I was wearing a red British and Irish Lions cap, of the exact shape and hue popularised by the tariff king, out on a walk last week when a passer-by looked me up and down witheringly.
He shook his head pityingly. “Xha! Sorry for you, né!” he said.
It took 10 years for my khaki wardrobe to be socially acceptable again. Hopefully the radioactive half-life on my Lions’ cap will be a lot less.
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