Dress Code Quotes

“The only fashion advice my father has ever given me is never wear anything you couldn't run from an assailant in. As pessimistic as that counsel may be, he has a point. So many of the hallmarks of women's fashion, from high heels to pencil skirts, in addition to being uncomfortable, slow us down and even endanger us.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“We can be serious and like pink.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“I know I’m far from alone in this—adolescence is made for shrugging on different identities, and clothing is the easiest way to express those identities.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“Another subculture that freely intermingles past and present: e-girls and e-boys, whose style combines aspects of Japanese kawaii culture, goth, skater, and punk, all remixed in classic bricolage tradition and heavily mediated by internet culture.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“In 2017, the writer Venkatesh Rao was eating at a fast-casual restaurant when a phrase popped into his head to describe the chain’s atmosphere: “premium mediocre.” He defined the concept in a blog post: “Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is ‘truffle’ oil on anything (no actual truffles are harmed in the making of ‘truffle’ oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Economy.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“Masstige, the blend of mass and prestige, is now cool. It’s been called the democratization of fashion, which is true in a sense—it’s great that the work of talented designers is able to reach a larger audience, and that customers are able to buy into that dream at affordable prices. Still, the overwhelming enthusiasm for masstige reminds me of the concept of “poptimism,” usually applied to music criticism. Once, only “authentic,” non-manufactured songs were considered worthy of critical discourse. Now, there’s an enthusiasm for top 40 hits, which is a welcome turn of events, but sometimes overshoots the mark and becomes a blanket endorsement of anything popular. More fashion, even if it’s more affordable and widely available, isn’t always an unqualified win for democracy.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“In an experiment, those who wore fake branded sunglasses as opposed to the real McCoy were more likely to cheat on a test and also judged others’ behavior as more unethical. “A product’s lack of authenticity may cause its owners to feel less authentic themselves,” the study’s authors wrote, “despite their belief that the product will actually have positive benefits . . . these feelings then cause them to behave dishonestly and to view other people’s behavior as more dishonest as well. In short, we suspect that feeling like a fraud makes people more likely to commit fraud.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“In a press release, Abercrombie & Fitch offered Jersey Shore star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino a “substantial” amount of money (later reported to be $10,000) not to wear their clothing on the show. Similar efforts were afoot with his castmates—the writer and fashion commentator Simon Doonan claimed in a New York Observer column that high-end brands were giving the reality stars their competitors’ luxury bags as a way to drive down their desirability.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“The French theorist Pierre Bourdieu’s landmark work Distinction made the point that not all currency is conspicuous in the way, say, owning a McMansion or a yacht is now. Something he called “cultural capital” can be a form of currency. For example, attending a prestigious university or becoming a subscriber to the symphony can give you cultural capital, even if you do not possess actual capital—you’re a broke grad student, say, or you spent your last paycheck on concert tickets.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“There is also what author and academic Elizabeth Currid-Halkett recently identified, in her book The Sum of Small Things, as “inconspicuous consumption”: things like private education, health care, and childcare, which bolster the upper classes but are less “visible” than a Birkin. Wealthy people in the Gilded Age, when Veblen was writing about status anxiety, had squadrons of servants; now they have French-speaking nannies, concierge doctors, and prep schools.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“James Laver, in Costume and Fashion: A Concise History, writes: “It is a curious comment on human aspiration that during the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, one of the demands of the insurgents was that they should be allowed to wear red like their betters.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, the artist writes: What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“The most rebellious move you can make these days might be getting the Establishment to cut you a check.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“One of the most confounding things about the pink-tinted economy is the way it’s selling back existing things to us and making them “new,” painting them as essentials of self-actualization and empowerment. An elite women’s club isn’t new. Nor is makeup. Nor is a modest floral garment. Nor is pink. What we have here is a rebranding of the reactionary.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“I think adolescents will always crave both standing out and asserting themselves while also needing to fit in somewhere. A subculture can function as a substitute family for teens who are getting ready to move away from their birth families, but years away from starting new ones of their own. That might explain why the “hipster” movement that began in the aughts and continues today extends into people in their twenties and thirties, as cultural factors like economic hardship continue to prolong youth and delay parenthood.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“Fashion and consumption can bring legitimate joy, and I don’t necessarily begrudge anyone their millennial pink bucket bags.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“Remember the you-go-girl ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes? They feel light-years removed from the campaigns of today, and not just because they’re for a product we all know is carcinogenic. The template was simple: sepia photo of oppressed woman from the past—usually wearing some kind of bustle—overlaid with a full-color shot of the present-day, liberated babe. “First, you got the right to vote, and now you’ve got a cigarette all your own,” was one caption, in which suffrage and the “right” to buy a product are weirdly conflated. Of course, other than their modish thinness, they were basically the same as standard cigarettes. (“Cancer—but for GIRLS!”) Even the tagline—“You’ve come a long way, baby.”—fell somewhere between gruff admiration and infantilizing condescension.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“The status signifiers of today may not be as obvious or as luxe as they were in the Gilded Age, but when social currency requires constant self-reinvention and measuring up, it takes effort to have the perfectly curated bookshelf, the photo-ready medicine cabinet, and the time to spend on self-actualization and self-improvement. For people in this privileged class, social media has become an opt-in surveillance state where how pretty and how good you are are constantly conflated. There have never been so many ways to express yourself—but there have also never been so many ways to be uncool and inadequate. Of course, keeping pace with this parallel self, who is always morally correct and always perfectly lit, becomes a form of toil in itself. And constantly striving to make the “right” consumer choices arguably distracts us from the unglamorous, real work of changing the world.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“If you want to have a presence on Instagram at all, even as a garden-variety non-famous person, you’ve probably considered sprucing up your space, upping the ante on your vacations, and drinking more photogenic lattes, because nothing happens in a vacuum anymore.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“And their appeal is predicated on telling us just how easily we can make that happen. Paltrow told the Financial Times that “the true tenets of wellness—meditation, eating whole foods, drinking a lot of water, sleeping well, thinking good thoughts, trying to be optimistic—are all free.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“Shiv Roy’s wardrobe on Succession has become the prime pop-culture example of stealth wealth. Her clothes—well-tailored high-waisted trousers and fitted turtlenecks—are by high-end brands like Armani and Ralph Lauren, but not easily identifiable in terms of their labels. They don’t scream “luxury,” but they definitely whisper it.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“Moschino once told GQ: “Funny clothes have to be extremely well made because that is where you find the chic. It’s easy to be funny with a T-shirt, but it’s more clever with a mink coat. After all, if caviar was cheaper it would taste much less interesting.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

“But now, subcultures have a monetary stake (if they’re lucky) in seeing themselves ascend to monoculture. No wonder they’re so eager to please.”
― Véronique Hyland, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink