Historical Analysis: Dressing for Success and Subtle Social Messages

This essay analyzes Timothy Shannon's article, "Dressing for Success," which explores how clothing serves as an expressive medium, reflecting cultural anthropology, power hierarchies, and personal beliefs. The analysis focuses on the 17th and 18th centuries, examining how fabric, cut, and ornamentations conveyed authority and social position. It discusses the evolution of fashion in relation to power dynamics and highlights the unique fashion landscape of the Mohawk Valley, where diverse populations coexisted and expressed a sense of equality through their clothing choices. The essay concludes that clothing in the Mohawk society served as a true expressive medium, reflecting the society's middle-ground existence and trade relationships.

Running Head: DRESSING FOR SUCCESS DENOTES THE DRESS CODES TO DELIVER SUBTLE MESSAGES
NAME
The details of a victory rarely tell us about the weak points of the winners. It presents them as
the problems converted into the opportunity. While picking up a few examples from the
historical Mohawk movement and corresponding era Author Timothy Shannon presented an
interesting account of the dressing sense of various historical figures and the subtle messages
that they were carrying with that dressing sense. The article “dressing for success” presents a
parallel point of view of the history of that era. ‘Consider dressing sense as an expressive
medium and it has an impact of the cultural anthropology of any given society'. Read this
sentence as a statement first and then add think about it as a question. It is a statement for the
era that Timothy Shannon captured in his article and it is a question in front of everyone
living anywhere in the world (Lemire 2018).
Cloths have the power to show the hierarchal powers, formal organizations often try to select
a dress code for the employees. The fashion and the selection of the fabric also depict power
and wealth. Author Timothy Shannon captured it beautifully and placed the dressing sense as
the statement of the power for these people. In the current article, Timothy deals with some
prominent characters in the era of the 17th and 18th century. Most of them represent the
diplomatic corridors of the USA during that period. When he brings in the opinion of cultural
anthropologist and confirms the validity of the statement that dressing sense is an "expressive
medium" then it opens a new thought process in a reader (Breen 2013). In the present article,
Timothy presented many examples where simple attributes of the clothing like the fabric, cut
and ornamentations presented subtle messages related to the authority and the social position
of the man.
Apart from the authority, clothes also present many personal traits and beliefs as well, for
instance, they talk loads about the likes, dislikes and sexual preferences of a person (White
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Running Head: DRESSING FOR SUCCESS DENOTES THE DRESS CODES TO DELIVER SUBTLE MESSAGES
2013). This article also tells us the nature of the fashion industry and how it evolves in
accordance with the power equations. This article also takes us on the journey of the fashion
corridors of that time. In the absence of strong leaders and public figures, British people of
that era were not following any role models. Still, they were keen to leave a personal style
statement for themselves and for this they were taking the support of the refinement in the
choice of the cloths by adding a personal touch to it (Duplessiss 2016).
We started this exploration of the Mohawk Valley with the help of the fashion sense of the
rainbow population which was living there. Historical books talk about the middle grounds
where the local residents of Mohwak, Britons, and others were living together and trading
with the each other. The fashion street of that era confirms this trade relationship. The
choices of the cloths clearly indicate that most of the people in that society were living with a
sense of equality. As a thumb rule rich and famous of any given society always enjoys a
different class. Apart from them, a big difference can be seen. In the case of Mohawk society,
we find that most of the people were free to practice their fashion choices. The statement
where we considered cloths as expressive mediums stand true for this society because it was
a society living in the middle grounds. Cloths and the fashion statements of the society also
confirm this.
Bibliography
Breen, Louise A. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
Duplessis, Robert S. The Material Atlantic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Lemire, Beverly. Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018.
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Running Head: DRESSING FOR SUCCESS DENOTES THE DRESS CODES TO DELIVER SUBTLE MESSAGES
White, Sophie. Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians. Pennsylvania: University of
Pennsylvania, 2013.
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