You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Dept.

The calendar and thermometer both say “no, no” but the presence of students on campus is a sure sign that summer is over. Regina Root and Giulia Pacini were on their way to lunch between meetings with freshman advisees when I ran into them.

I congratulated Regina on her new book, Couture & Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina. Later that afternoon, Regina showed up in my office with a copy.

Regina is an expert in Latin American fashion (and her name was recently mentioned as a possible judge in the national beauty pageant of Colombia.) She took a few minutes to explain the subtle intertwining of dress with the politics of Argentina in the early 1800s, when power factions were struggling for control of the embryonic nation.

Color mattered a lot. Regina told me that the administration of the Juan Rosas regime insisted that loyal citizens all wear crimson or scarlet or some kind of deep red. “Wearing light blue, the color of the opposition, could get you killed or tortured,” Regina said.

She also said that members of the opposition, the guys who would wear light blue if they could get away with it, often expressed their political views through women’s fashion magazines. The press, Regina says, was heavily monitored, but magazines for ladies weren’t considered to be serious enough to be worth the bother. Hence, she said, many opposition leaders would write under female pseudonyms, issuing calls to smash the state in the guise of fashion commentary.

You can’t make this stuff up. Watch Ideation for a story on Regina’s book. There’s also an interview online with Regina.

I’m no longer going to scoff at all those “10 makeup tips from Beverly Hills” articles. For all I know it’s coded realpolitik.