Tonight we had dinner at a high end place here in SoFL. Pretty much ruling class crowd. Got through $400 of food & drink for two light eaters. Lotta very thin, very pretty, very enhanced women and men with very expensive watches. Ferraris and Rolls’ are commonplace at the valet.
I wore nice slacks, dress shirt, dress shoes. There was a fat guy in cutoff shorts at the next table, and several men in ordinary blue jeans & sneakers, not fashion jeans nor fashion sneakers. And other men in nice dress too. Women wore anything from revealing slinkywear and big real jewelry to Crocs with gym pants.
I dress and groom for myself, but my personal standards are high enough that I don’t worry what anyone else thinks. The mad scramble to change or tidy up when the doorbell rings is best left to sit-coms.
Throw on a dress? Nope not that easy. Need the right undergarments, need the right shoes, legs shaved usually, pedicure or presentable toes a must, choose the right purse, style the hair apply makeup if desired. Finally a puff of Fragrance.
Or go nekkid underneath a bright voluminous caftan, no one has to know you’re barefoot.
I’ve noticed things very similar to that. I can’t help feeling that such people have somehow gotten the idea in their heads that they have the right to pick and choose the consequences of their actions.
For me, a lot of it depends on my state of mind and where I’m going. When I’m feeling relatively good or if I’m going to be going somewhere that I don’t want to make a negative impression, I’ll shower, try to do something cute with my hair, put on leggings and an appropriate t-shirt. If I’m trying to actually make a good impression instead of not a bad one, I’ll wear a dress that I think I look good in. But when my depression is at a high and I’m required to leave the house, I’ll just throw on one of my house dresses, slip into my sandals, and leave.
For the most part, who I dress for is a balance between what makes me feel good about myself and what doesn’t make me look bad.
I dress for comfort and to satisfy the legal requirement for “modesty”.
Usually jeans and a t-shirt, but this summer has been mostly shorts-and-tee. I do make allowances for things like jury duty (I wore slacks and a button-up), but mostly, I just… don’t… care.
If anybody judges me for what I’m wearing? Fuck them. And fuck them ten times over if they even notice what I have on my feet. (Why, yes, I am mentally divergent, why do you ask?)
While I understand the “I don’t care!” attitude, I suspect most people have a bright line: don’t care about clothes to wear, don’t care about washing them, don’t care about washing hair, don’t care about washing everything else, don’t care about wiping butt…why care about any of it? And if you do have a line, you can appreciate that others may also have lines, and like you, they will make judgements. And some people enjoy clothes for more than “keeps me out of jail,” and they often spread joy with their attire.
And the best part of being more dressed up is if the event/function/meeting is a bore, you can leave and everyone thinks it’s because you have something more important to go to.
I passed some sort of milestone (of age) some years ago when I was wearing a tie and instead of being asked “got a job interview?” I was asked, “got a court appearance?” IANAL.
I want a thread where @MrDibble posts pics of what he’s wearing on any particular day. I loved all the looks he mentioned.
Me? I’m retired, so I’m mostly dressed for comfort. But if I’m leaving the house for anything other than going to the market or something like that I like to wear a real blouse and cotton pants or a loose dress. I never wear sweats. They’re too warm for me, and I think they’re really ugly.
I prefer a Boho style, and I like unusual jewelry. I dress for myself, and the occasion, but not for other people.
It’s easy to just wear the same “uniform” every day, but I get bored with that.
In as much as I’m ‘dressing up’, mostly for others.
I can’t stand uncomfortable clothes, so it’s a constant struggle to find outfits that are acceptably in-fashion/normal looking, appropriate for the occasion, and reasonably flattering, that I can actually tolerate wearing. Oh, and that have pockets. If no one else was going to see me, I’d wear some baggy sack (and since I now work from home, I do spend a lot of time wearing a dressing gown).
Well, when I see people who dress in a manner as if they didn’t give a shit about their appearance, I tend to wonder what else they don’t give a shit about?
I have a stack of Carhartt T shirts. I wear those with jeans and boots. In hot weather I wear them with cargo shorts and trainers. For more social occasions I have a bunch of Hawaiian shirts and to get real fancy, I have a pair of black jeans.
I own a suit. The last time I wore it I was a pall bearer for a funeral.
What is lost when there is a loss of dress code is significant. But it is part of the generalized loss of ritual and rhythm in all social life. Many people, clearly, find this a relief. There are no bowling clothes, beach clothes, work uniforms, going-to-town clothes, church clothes, my-special-day clothes. Instead there is a general slovenly unisex sameness.
Long ago, John Steinbeck remarked upon a meeting of a group of highly ranked artistic types with wealthy donors and sponsors that he attended; he found it telling that the creatives all wore casual clothes. That was because they could not be socially punished for wearing inappropriate clothing, due to their status. At that time that was a very small niche category. Now it is essentially everyone. Everyone dresses like children now. There are no longer any commonly visible adults, except the police.
Historically, people dressed very specifically for being in public. Everyone had a work uniform, whether that was the white coveralls of the milkman, the fancy jacket of the doorman, the modest dress of the teacher, the habit of the nun, the collar of the priest, the suit of the clerk, the much more expensive suit of the banker … and the same was true for public recreation. You could tell just by glancing that someone was going golfing, walking, or boating.
This has been all been lost. And those who revel in their sweatpants and tee shirts may think it a great benefit. But like many other things which have been slovened out of existence (like spelling and grammar), there has been no replacement for that loss. Just an increasingly undifferentiated mass of lowest-level sameness, a loss of public identities that pervades all our interactions.
Because I am highly introverted and generally avoid public life, this doesn’t affect me the way it does those who participate much more, but I can observe it, perhaps more readily than people aswim in it.
Interesting. Your observation of the world around us is so diametrically opposite of what I see.
I completely agree that there is less of a uniform uniform standard. Not as much uniformity in what our uniforms should be. I just see that uninformed of a uniform uniform standard there is less not more uniformity.
I see a variety everywhere. The variety does not declare that this person is a golfer, a walker, a banker, or a wanker … but undifferentiated sameness I am not observing.
What a load of crap. No matter how much of that cheap perfume that you seem to think is flowery language you spray on it, it still smells like elitism.
No pics. But today, I am wearing black walking tights, 8-hole oxblood Doc Martens, a long-tailed white dress shirt, a black wool ribbed-knit crewneck jumper with some ragged holes on the front, black fingerless handwarmers & a black wool knit cap. When I leave the house later to walk the dog, I will add a long grey knitted wool scarf and a black melton pea coat. It is, needless to say, pretty cold here today.
When I’m out I dress for the benefit of others: T-shirt, shorts, sneakers. At home, I relax my dress code significantly: shirt-optional, shorts-optional, shoes-optional, baseball cap-required. I haven’t worn long pants in, I don’t remember how long, and I let my hair (what’s left of it) grow as wild as a lion’s mane.
Oh, in my young-buck days, I was a pulchritudinous fashion icon (pastel leisure suits, mullet haircut with a red bandana tied around, popped collars, and so on and so forth), but those days are long gone (5 years, at least).
I am thinking of bringing my old couture out of storage and going out on the town. It would be great to see all the heads turn and gaze upon me once again. Jealousy? What else could it be!
