throughout the early to mid-1900s, with federal acknowledgement of their dishonorable associability with nominally outdated chain gang labor, the evolution of the uniform's design has since clung to the ideal of dishonoring its wearer. We can picture, hypothetically, who's in them, what they're doing, and maybe even what they 'did.' Conspicuous enough to discourage escape attempts, the boldly, starkly striated uniform clearly and humiliatingly distinguished incarcerated persons – and, as clothing historian Juliet Ash identifies, took advantage of an inexpensive pattern that 'symbolically represented prison bars', in essence rendering incarcerated citizens doubly caged.Ī still from directors Joel and Ethan Coen's fiction film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)Ī pair of incarcerated citizens waiting for their respective visitors at New York State's Sing Sing Prison, photographed in 1904.Īlthough the black and white stripes were abandoned in most facilities across the U.S. by their widespread referencing (and, at times, their parodying) in visual media. This uniform trajectory evolved into, by 1815, the black and white striped suits that are calcified into the history of incarceration in the U.S.

From Hoaxes, Humbugs and Spectacles by Mark Sloan (1990)

In the later 1790s and through the early 1800s, uniforms were introduced to loudly call out the convicted nature of the incarcerated: they were colorful or other otherwise categorically differentiating, and were deliberately humiliating.Ī group of incarcerated men photographed in 1895 in Utah. In New York, for example, the introduction of a more consistent prison outfit shifted from a focus on normality, to a focus on explicit differentiation. Instituted in Philadelphia, the benevolence of this act didn't quite translate to other prisons in the U.S. From Few Comforts or Surprises by Eugene Richards (1973). Incarcerated men in an Arkansas penitentiary working in the laundry facility. Introducing clothing manufacturing as a new system of labor within the prisons and jails themselves, the actual clothing that was being produced and worn now mimicked the general, modest style of the times: plain gowns for women, two-piece outfits of linen in the summertime for men, and of wool in the winter, with access to jackets and coats ( source). An act put into place in 1790, which was part of a so-thought progressive new system of penology proposed by a Philadelphia-based consortium of prison reformers, instituted a consistent manner of dress for incarcerated individuals.

Rewind clothing 1983