A clearinghouse of social codes, clothing also springs from concrete exchanges of resources, work, and wealth. > Dressing is an individual act, but it is also a deeply social one. Clothing is not merely a demonstration of our relations to one another, it is a crystallization of these relationships. Clothes explores the basic questions of civic life like inequalities, classes, and gender > "Cultural debates about clothes become proxy wars for other issues. In any historical period or region, to study a culture’s conflicts and debates about clothes is to watch them approach the basic questions of civic life. How much inequality should exist between people, and should they be able to rise in the world? How does a society treat its women and men?" [[Dressing is a value statement]]