Dress code strictly enforced: Home

Dress Code Strictly Enforced draws on the artist’s experience as a Spanish interpreter in the U.S. courts. Wilson compares attorneys, defendants, judges, and people in other key roles to theatrical players, wearing predetermined costumes and participating in staged dialogue.

The heads-bodies-legs mix and match structure of the book allows readers to create new combinations. Doing so, they redefine the fifteen characters and create absurd, contradictory messages. The postface quotes the song “There but for Fortune,” reminding readers that the role played by any given person is governed by chance as they move through interlocking systems of power.