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Essays

Long-form on how a garment was built, and what it was built to make a person into. The argument follows the evidence, never opens with it.

The Coat that Was Borrowed

The white coat is the most borrowed garment in this archive — doctors took it from chemists, and everyone else took it from doctors. It is also the only professional uniform here that was never re-cut for women.
Two chemists in a 1940s laboratory, a bacteriologist around 1950, and a geneticist in 2012 — all in white coats

First Names Only

The name badge is a small object with a large asymmetry in it: the wearer’s first name is legible to a stranger who gives nothing back.
A modern employee name badge, a waitress uniform, and a 1965 conference badge

It Is Not Supposed to Fit You

Institutional clothing is sized rather than tailored, and that is a design decision rather than a budget one. A uniform that fitted each wearer perfectly would individuate them.
A school gym suit, a high school basketball jersey and a school uniform, photographed as museum objects

The Coat Was Black First

Medicine spent most of the nineteenth century in black frock coats and changed to white in about a generation. The switch was not about hygiene. It was a claim to be a science.
A seventeenth-century physician in black, a rail of white lab coats, and a surgeon in modern scrubs