Responses to the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s new relaxation of Senate dress codes have so far fallen along partisan lines: Republicans have been deploring it as a lapse in decorum and order. “Most if not all Republican senators think we ought to dress up to go to work,” Mitch McConnell said. How we dress telegraphs intricate messages to those around us, as well as to ourselves — messages we receive and interpret constantly, consciously or not. There is no such thing as “total freedom” of dress, only different registers of meaning, which are entirely context dependent. Men’s suits say “we are heads, not bodies.”

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Persons: Chuck Schumer’s, ” Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tina Smith, John Fetterman, “, ” Organizations: Democrats, Democratic, “, Republicans, MSNBC