This paper reassesses the objectives and reach of Mahmud II’s landmark 1826-29 dress reforms. Drawing on archives of contemporary portraiture, official documentation and memoir, it argues that these measures must be understood within the longer history of dress and textiles’ central role in ordering the Ottoman state, and in the particular social context of early 19th century Istanbul. The sweeping changes to official and public dress introduced by the 1829 laws especially, were not just a question of updating the state’s appearance, but signaled a deep and conscious break w?th a whole set of inherited ideals and institutions of statecraft. Showing the failure of repeated efforts in preceding decades to reassert certain aspects of traditional sumptuary demarcation, the paper suggests that these reforms constituted a long-overdue acknowledgement of the changed social and economic structures of the capital, as much as any deliberate Westernization. Many elements of the new official dress, far from being alien imports, were already well-established in the wardrobes of Istanbul’s consuming classes, while there are also considerable continuities of stylistic and ceremonial norms around male dress into the 1830s and beyond. Moreover, fixation with the fez has often obscured these reforms’ other political and economic dimensions. By replacing the existing sartorial vocabulary with a new system of badges, insignia and subtle decorative gradations, Mahmud sought to decisively reassert centralized, sultanic control over the symbols and markers of social status. Clamping down on expensive imported cloth and the perceived blight of recklessly excessive consumption in the capital were also major considerations on these laws’ formation.