“sumptuary”
― Elizabeth Fremantle, Queen's Gambit Free 1st Chapter
The earliest sumptuary regulations in Christian Europe were
church regulations of clergy, distinguishing what ranks could wear which items
of vestments or (to a lesser extent) normal clothes on particular occasions;
these were already very detailed by 1200, in early recessions of canon law. Next followed regulations, again flowing
from the church (by far the largest bureaucracy in Medieval Europe), attempting
to enforce the wearing of distinctive clothing or badges so that members of
various groups could be readily identified, as branded criminals already could
be.