A cultural history of school uniform

Kate Stephenson’s book constitutes a rich and thorough analysis of the history of school uniform in English schools, which spans charity schools in the sixteenth century to twenty-first century discussions on freedom and glamour of school apparel. Through an impressive array of sources, including laws, school rules, educational reports, letters, autobiographies, magazines, and films, and covering a temporal arch that allows her to trace long term trends and shifts, the author draws an ample panorama of the history of school uniform.

Her work provides a much-needed update on a line of inquiry that in the United Kingdom tended to be dominated by descriptive approaches, usually written from the perspective of public schools and replete with nostalgia. The study traces the connections of school uniforms to economic, political, and social developments, and brings together the analysis of disciplinary rules and gender stereotypes with that of the production and consumption of material goods, for example, studying the impact on school uniforms of the revolution brought by synthetic fibers in the twentieth century. It also connects school uniforms to the history of fashion, considering how models have circulated from exclusive public schools to mass production and vice versa, as is the case of the history of the Eton suit. Rejecting top-down models that privilege the dissemination of trends that start in the upper classes, Stephenson shows the winding circuits of emulation and imitation in which uniforms took their shape, and which muddle any search for defined origins or inventors.

The book is organized in five chapters that follow a chronological and thematic order. The first two chapters discuss the emergence of school uniforms in charity schools that received poor and orphaned children and their adoption by public schools for boys, which are the other end of the spectrum regarding privilege and class. In these two chapters, the approach through institutional histories is noteworthy, as the reader can not only follow the trajectory of uniforms in particular schools and trace the dissemination of models and designs across diverse settings, but also understand the importance of flexible local arrangements until the twentieth century and even beyond. The third chapter analyzes the history of uniforms in schools for girls, a line that had not been explored but for a few exceptions (Spencer, 2007), and inscribes them in debates and struggles around female appearance. Chapter Four considers uniform practices in middle-class secondary education and elementary schools in a period that ranges from 1850 to the onset of World War Two, which is the moment in which the model of public schools, with its combination of muscular Christianity, imperial aspirations, Victorian and Edwardian morality, and social distinction, was adopted for all schools and became mandatory despite its cost to families. The fifth and last chapter covers the war period and its aftermath, with the trend towards austerity and informalization but also its reversal in recent years, when school uniforms have regained currency as morally and religiously adequate apparel, or, after been revamped in pop culture, as a sexy outfit, for example in the clubbing scene. The war-time debates on what is essential in schools are particularly interesting to read amidst the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Stephenson’s main thesis is that school uniforms must be understood within class and gender dynamics. The adoption of public-school uniforms as symbols of British national identity is telling of class relations in the UK, where respectability and distinction have been central to the construction of a particular egalitarianism. This egalitarianism could perhaps be better defined as a meritocratic ideal that promotes equal opportunity to develop one’s own ‘gifts’. Within this framework, uniforms worked and still operate as symbols of achievement and success. In these arguments, uniforms are presented as conveyors or reflectors of external dynamics. In this respect, this book reaffirms the centrality of the concept of social class for the historiography of education in Britain, in approaches that include Marxists and non-Marxists (McCulloch, 2010), but leaves aside more recent discussions on class and gender that question them as independent variables (Bennett et al., 2009) and the role of non-human agents in social assemblages. Such an approach also prevents the study from fully engaging with the ‘under-stories’ of uniforms and their relationship to experiences of schooling that are always sensorial and material (Burke, 2021, p. 15).

A final comment is related to the scope of this study. To quote a recent BBC movie, this book is a very British history, or even English, not only because it is based on mostly English sources, as the author says in the first pages, but also because the school uniform (singular) is still taken to be the model of English public schools throughout the book. This (mis)conception explains why Stephenson states in her conclusions that ‘very few countries outside the Empire utilized any form of school uniform, making school uniform uniquely British’ (p. 148). Despite mentions of designs brought from Belgium (p. 77), the ‘djibbah’ quoting Dervish attire (p. 87), the use of French berets (p. 102), the comparison with Nazi and Fascist youth uniforms (p. 118), and the reference to uniforms in Japanese pop culture (pp.131–2), these threads are underplayed in an argument that stresses the idea that uniforms are indeed an English creation and that the English experience of uniforms is unique.

Yet, what is unique and singular in this history? The impressive study done by Stephenson and her careful consideration of local sources would benefit from a more attentive look at the transnational flows of knowledge and goods that are always at the heart of the local (Galison, 2016). One interesting line to follow would be the history of pinafores, which were dismissed in English schools but triumphed in Continental Europe and Latin America, and that are related to notions of egalitarianism and republicanism that differ from the British ones. Uniforms did not take the same form everywhere; the transnational comparison raises relevant questions about the singularity of the English case. Another possible complication of nationalistic narratives would be to explore the imperial entanglements of uniforms that go beyond the action of taking them to the colonies, and analyze the connections between textile production, modern designs, and contestations of sensibilities and boundaries. To take one of Stephenson’s cases, the ‘djibbah’ and its participation in the construction of the exotic and the eccentric could be further researched with a postcolonial awareness.

Overall, Stephenson’s argument against conceiving this history as a top-down movement or the unravelling of a single thread remains an important one. Her work is a relevant step in that direction and a welcome addition to other studies that are enriching our understanding of past school experiences and the role of material artifacts in them.