It seems to me that trying to “buck convention” by dressing down is to invite failure. There is no way for an observer to tell whether you are a principled objector to the tyranny of “fashionable” merchandising or if you are just a slob.
I don’t believe there are very many people who don’t care at all about their appearance. People may say they don’t, but you bet they’d change their tune if suddenly they were forced to wear a pink ballerina tutu and strut down the street. Or better yet, wear an orange jumpsuit with “PRISONER” stenciled on the front.
I live in a forest full of dirt and sticks. If I wore nice clothes at home I would get one use out of them. I look for clothes that last a while, are comfortable and strong and don’t pick up burrs. Like many in a similar position I’ve developed a sort of uniform of heavy tee shirts, loose jeans, work boots, practical hat, etc.
However, once I started going to church and realized I didn’t have a single presentable piece of clothing I started accumulating outfits that were respectful of that environment (modest, casually dressy). I like having the option of being appropriate in a social setting. If I want to make a statement about how I don’t care about how people think of me, I can always wear my sticks-and-dirt clothes. But I find that I have outgrown that desire.
I recently attended the memorial service of a long time family friend, at her home. The widower wore pajamas. The tenured professor at Princeton daughter showed up in a black pencil skirt suit and white silk blouse. The Los Angeles futures trader son showed up in a shirt open to his nipples and handmade Italian shoes and tight pants. The spiritual seminar leader son from Hawaii showed up in thongs, baggy shorts, and aloha shirt. His daughter (the deceased’s only grandchild) appeared in a mini dress that barely covered her underwear or her bra and spike heeled sandals.
My point here? The only person dressed for this memorial service was the professor daughter, and that might have simply been because her working clothes happened to be appropriate. All the other relatives seemed to have been extremely determined to not spare one sartorial thought for the occasion – which they were the central actors in. This did not read to me as “we are so full of grief we don’t even realize what we are wearing”, but more like a curiously aggressive statement about not bending an inch for the damn ceremony, and being very anxious to get out of there and go back to their lives.
Clothes, if worn in public, are nonverbal signs to other people about you. No matter what you wear, no matter how little you care, they will tell people a lot about you if you never even open your mouth. That is what social clothes are FOR. If you wear ill-fitting second-hand clothes inappropriate to most social settings, people will make certain assumptions about you – rather complex assumptions which may be more accurate than you are comfortable with.
Yeah, no shit. Everyone wants their clothes comfortable and all clothes serve some sort of utility purpose. That doesn’t mean I wear a freakin jumpsuit everywhere.
I don’t care how nice they look, as long as they are nice bright colors, and preferably, summery.
This is interesting in relationship to my two-year old. His clothes don’t say much at all: plain shirts, or cute generic animals/vehicles/robots, for the most part. But there’s a lot of effort in that: I don’t like licensed characters, I don’t like sports or military or “extremmmmme” themed stuff, and I especially don’t like overly sentimental/cutesy sayings. Do you have any idea how hard it is to not dress a kid in any of those things?
I guess what I am saying is that if I genuinely didn’t care, my kid would end up as a default looking like I had a decided preference for all kinds of things–certain superheros, certain ideals of manhood, certain family dynamics–that I don’t. So I have to go out of my way to maintain a neutral message. I don’t know that this really means anything, but it’s kind of interesting.
I think social conditioning worked to the point that I want to look good. But having to do something about that bores me to tears. I don’t understand how shopping can be fun. It isn’t, it’s torture. Boring torture. I always hope someone will buy me a nice dress for Christmas. And putting together an outfit… gah! I wish I had Anna from Downton Abbey to dress me.
I have found that only ever wearing dresses significantly reduces my annoyance, while simultaneously allowing me to always look good. It means you reduce the thinking by half, and there is no matching involved! On top of that, trousers restrict movement in a stupid way and in a dress + tights I can sit any way like. Comfy, but more accepted than wearing pjs all day.
It’s okay with me that everyone knows I’m a slob. I dress my best in court, the rest of the time, it’s pretty ugly.
I’m going to let my family know before I die they can look any way they want at my funeral/memorial service. If they do decide to hold something, I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable or feel like they have to put on a pious act for the sheer sake of the watching and judging public. I am not the dress-up type. So a dressed-down affair would be entirely appropriate to celebrate my life.
My opinion is that that memorial services are for remembering the lost loved one in the company of others and being respectful of the family who’s hosting the affair. I’ll dress up to show my respect to the grieving family. But if the whole family is dressed a certain way, I’ll assume this is just how this family rolls when it comes to celebrating a love one’s life. Like jazz funerals in New Orleans. Not everyone celebrates in the same way. Without knowing the deceased person’s wishes, it’s pretty tough to judge anyone as “disrespectful”.
I think it means something. It’s like an accent: we all have one, whether we can hear it or not. There’s no such thing as unaccented speech and there’s no such thing as “unaccented” dress. There is no such thing as a neutral observer, either.
I’d do it, the prisoner thing might get the police called and you shot though.
Once when I was out of clean boxers I just grabbed a pair of panties, freaked my wife out. I attach 0 meaning to clothing.
This is a slightly dated but still interesting article about exactly that. The author argues that there is unmarked dress for men, but not women.
Neither, I dress to the cheapest, which is rarely fashionable, and I’ll only buy more when the old wear out.
Not all of us are well enough off to be able to dress nicely.
The other thing to remember when buying clothes, is that a lot of new fashionable clothing is made by sweatshop workers in Bangladesh.
Very interesting, though I don’t think I agree that there is unmarked dress for men. There is dress that won’t raise comment, as she said, in any given context, but in a context of “all sorts of people are here together” which is what life generally is, there is no neutral for men either. The beards she points out are okay in the context she was in, but maybe not in all, so we have to take almost micro-contexts to say that men are unmarked. Women, though, I agree are marked across all contexts.