The difficulty of so tightly connecting identity to appearance, as was the case in the preindustrial city, is that an individual can rather easily alter the one by altering the other. When identities can be donned, they can also be appropriated. And the appropriation of identities would appear to have been one of the favorite pastimes in the historic urban settlement.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 286