The Same Cloth

A man becomes the creature of his uniform
Napoleon Bonaparte

After waiting all of 2020 for the reset of January, it seems like the month was over before it started. We’ve spun out into February, reeling a bit perhaps but hopefully still excited about the new(ish) year. Many of us are still in a very acute kind of limbo: life with Covid. We’ve adjusted and readjust…we keep masks in the car, we check in with our pod, we celebrate, grieve, and mark time together in new and necessary ways.
Like all of you, we’re marking moments in ways that feel manageable but also good. We still have to allow ourselves to feel good! And what feels great right now is knowing that this month, Salt and Aloes will be hosting our first virtual book signing. We’re creating ourselves in real time. I hope you enjoy this month’s post (feel free to share your own uniformed photos!) and make sure to scroll all the way down for some highlights of the month on our calendar.

Bishop Anstey High School, Trinidad 1970’s. By the 1980’s the stylish bullfighter caps were no longer worn as part of the official school uniform.

My alma mater, Bishop Anstey High School, recently celebrated its 100th birthday. Alumni from across the world gathered in person and virtually, sharing memories and cheeky posts like, “X Ways to Recognize a Bishops Girl” - signifiers that included “the ponytail”, the ‘attitude’, the network and most significantly, the uniform. In our red and black striped ties (loosely knotted and resting on the second button), we were a particular tribe of women, distinguished from the other particular tribes whose skirts were a lighter shade of blue or whose blouses had a rounded collar. The codes and community that is the work of material culture marked us then and bind us now. We were, and always would be, Bishops Girls.

St. Andrew’s High School, Jamaica 1960’s

Uniforms evolved throughout the 18th and 19th century as a modern material practice, a clear eyed rationalism that powered the industrial revolution. The machine of Western capitalism was shifting both time and space, demanding among other things, an “order” out of “chaos”. As European powers extended themselves globally they recognized a need for not men of letters, but administrators, men schooled in empire. This new approach to education became formalized through uniform, shaped by ecclesiastical and military attire and infused with new ideas about masculinity and citizenship.  Where empire went, uniforms followed. The practice would be instituted in most British colonies, Canada being one of the few exceptions.

Clothing as material and material culture is an important device in building and maintaining power structures. With uniforms come ideas about discipline and authority; order and distinctiveness; role models; gender training, sensuality and even depravity. School uniforms demonstrate precisely how clothing functions as a cultural practice specifically because of the centrality of the rules; how, when and by whom certain garments should be worn. But what is at stake in these seemingly arbitrary rules? As if the fate of a nation could ever be determined upon a button or skirt hem. Perhaps, on a much larger scale, they do. These rules ensure that clothing, and specifically uniforms, become a major technology for not only controlling the body and its behavior, but also actively producing attributes that are deemed desirable by the school and society at large. Female uniforms in particular, function as a formal coda of discipline; instruction on idealized femininity inseparable from sexual politics and policing.

Girls conducting an experiment in a chemistry lesson at Queen’s College, Barbados 1964

I think about uniforms as costume, code and control mechanisms as we head into what would be carnival season. Here, the conversation around the policing of women’s bodies is louder, as what were local street parades have become a global digital spectator sport. What women can, should, will and demand to wear (or not wear) is a active battleground but carnival is not the only active front. Our classrooms, offices and city streets are theaters of war far less dramatic, but just as consequential. Even as Bishops Girls, restrained by unflattering skirts and boxy skirts, we felt this; a pull of forming and conforming through clothing. We hiked our skirts as far as we could get away with, discovered the cache of better quality uniforms in the nurses office and tucked necklaces out of sight in the presence of teachers. We were being trained to follow the rules and training ourselves and each others on how to subvert them. We decided how to mark ourselves.

To my sisters, my Bishops Girls who became Hilarian Women, I wish you the happiest of birthdays. Here’s to another century of audacious (and audaciously dressed) women!