Insights

The tie and the making of masculine order I had to wear a tie when I first went to school. We all did. Later, when I moved to secondary school, I had to wear a different one. I understood what the other parts of the uniform were for. A jumper kept you warm. A coat was for bad weather. Trousers and a shirt covered the body. But the tie felt different. Even then, it wasn’t obvious what function it served. It was clear, though, that it mattered. Teachers corrected it. You were t

Before I knew anything about class, status, or style, I knew this: if you wanted to enter a world, you had to be dressed for it. That was the lesson Mr Benn taught me. Every episode began with the same uniform of respectable English stability: jacket, tie, bowler hat, striped trousers. He then stepped into the fancy-dress shop, changed clothes, and found himself somewhere else entirely. A cowboy, a spaceman, a diver, a hunter: the outfit changed, and so did the world. Looking

Most people misread Masonic regalia as decorative, as a ceremonial display of aprons, collars, and metal jewels, even though each element has a specific function. What appears ornamental is in fact organised information that fixes meaning through role, rank, and position, turning dress into a system. Though I am not a Freemason, it is the clarity of that system that fascinates me. To read Masonic dress, you start with the common ground. In English Craft Freemasonry, that mean

Digital ID promises convenience, but what it normalises is permanent readiness for inspection. Digital systems are beginning to demand what menswear long helped manage: that the body arrive already sorted. In many of the spaces that organise everyday life, clothing has never simply covered the body; it has made the person easier to place. It signals competence, threat, seriousness, respectability, compliance, often before a word is spoken. It grants ease to some and friction