As we saw in the last chapter, the maintenance of appearential ordering, or at least those aspects of it relating to the visibility of status, was largely in the interest of the aristocratic elites. They were its watchdogs, its righteous guardians. We saw also that this guardianship had, for centuries, been no easy job. The assault had not come from the masses. They were much too poor to even consider aping the dress of their "betters." No, the assault had come from that minority in the old feudal orders who had been able to accumulate great wealth: the merchant bourgeois. This is not to suggest that this group was ideologically opposed to the visible display of status distinctions. Exactly the opposite. Where they were in control, as in Colonial America, they took great pains to institute costuming regulations quite similar to those extant in Europe. What this group wanted, rather, was merely to display an elite status which they felt, by right of wealth, they deserved.

XREF: Connects to Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption and status competition — the wealthy merchant class, not the poor, drives challenges to dress hierarchies.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 309