Sumptuary laws regulated clothing, ornamentation, food, drink, and other forms of luxury, imposing a hierarchy of consumption. These laws prohibited certain ranks of persons from wearing specified cloths, garments, or ornamentation. They can be traced back to antiquity, but they proliferated rapidly during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. These laws embodied a paradox: they distributed luxury by rank by imposing constraints on luxury. The sumptuary ethic was strongly implicated in some of the most crucial phases of the expansion of urbanization and the transition from mercantile to manufacturing capitalism. i

Additionally, sumptuary laws weren’t just used to strengthen the social hierarchy but also to identify those outside of it. In medieval Europe, this often meant Jews and Muslims. Minorities were subject to dress codes for easy identification and ease of discrimination. The spirit of this distinction did not disappear altogether and was revived in Nazi Germany by imposing the yellow badge as a race discriminator..ii In the concentration camps, groups were identified by coloured triangles, i.e. Jews yellow, Roma brown and homosexuals pink.

A black chiffon blouse displayed in the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens belonged to Liza Pinchas, one of the few survivors of the 40,000 Jewish residents of Thessaloniki. It is embroidered with twelve quotes in French chosen by her on her return to Greece from Auschwitz-Birkenau. These phrases gave her hope and strength as she returned to life.

I have embroidered these quotes into the fabric in Yiddish, German, Polish, Roma, French and English.

i https://www.thecollector.com/what-are-sumptuary-laws/

ii https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/law/sumptuary-laws