Proscription or Requirement of Native Dress
Sumptuary laws have also been used to control populations by prohibiting the wearing of native dress and hairstyles, along with the proscription of other cultural customs. Sir John Perrot, Lord Deputy of Ireland under Elizabeth I, banned the wearing of traditional woollen mantles, "open smocks" with "great sleeves", and native headdresses, requiring the people to dress in "civil garments" in the English style.
In a similar manner, the Dress Act of 1746, part of the Act of Proscription issued under George II of the United Kingdom following the Jacobite Risings, made wearing Scottish Highland Dress including tartans and kilts illegal in Scotland for anyone not in the British military. The Act was repealed in 1782, having been largely successful, and a few decades later, "romantic" Highland Dress was enthusiastically adopted by George IV on a Walter Scott-inspired visit to Scotland in 1822.
In Bhutan, the wearing of traditional dress (which also has an ethnic connotation) in certain places, such as when visiting government offices, was made compulsory in 1989 under the driglam namzha laws. Part of the traditional dress includes the kabney, a long scarf whose coloring is regulated. Only the King of Bhutan and Chief Abbot may don the saffron scarf, with various other colors reserved for government and religious officers, and white available for common people.
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Famous quotes containing the words requirement, native and/or dress:
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—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A native health and innocence
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“At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what diverted me most was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbons with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)