Uniform: The Representative of Power and Modernity in the First Pahlavi’s Reign

Along with establishing modern military and bureaucratic and educational institutions, the First Pahlavi government exerted uniformed clothing system for men and women. Implemented in the 1920’s, the uniformed clothing system represented the hegemony of power structure over people’s lives. It was also regarded as a significant means of national control that led to construction of a modern, ordered, and disciplined society. Through studying the historical context, the present article asks the following research question: How did the First Pahlavi utilize the uniformed clothing system to construct a modern Iranian national identity? After reviewing the history of uniformed clothing system in Qajar’s time through the article’s descriptive-analytical methodology, it reviews the significance of implementation of uniformed clothing system in the First Pahlavi’s reign. Such a review will investigate the relationship of such an implementation with nationalism and modernization of the Iranian society. Alongside these two scholarly objectives, the article identifies the political, social and aesthetic qualities of implementation of uniformed clothing system in the First Pahlavi’s period. The uniformed clothing system was a means for enforcing power and discipline, overturning plural preexisting identities, and instilling uniformed behavioral codes in people. Being loyal to the structure of power, the uniformed clothing system also represented the ordered and dynamic world and was a reflection of a disciplined and educated society.