Abbigliamento ed emancipazione femminile

CLOTHING AND WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION The essay focuses on the relationship between clothing and women’s emancipation process from a legal perspective. Over the centuries the dressing style has been an important empowerment tools and also a mirror of the legal status of women within society. From this point of view, we will examine several historical phases: so, on the one hand, the constraints in medieval times, in the absolute State and in the “Restoration” period; and, on the other hand, the freedom to dress as a privilege in the time of the Seigniories and Principalities, as a symbol of protest and of claiming rights in the revolutionary period and in the “Belle époque”, and even later, up to the present time. At least until now, as should emerge from the analysis, the aforementioned evolutionary dynamics, despite having experienced some moments of stalemate and even regression, would seem on the whole to have followed the principle of the maximum expansion of individual freedom (also sub species of “right to gender identity”). In this context, the fashion industry has today moved towards the s.c. “crossdressing” and the production of “non specific gender” clothes.