# Re fashion etiquette are off the shoulder tops & dresses inappropriate for "dressy" occasions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 21, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950 "2017-04-21T22:22:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/21 "2017-04-24T17:00:44Z")
I don’t know about this situation. I do know that women were told not to wear open toed shoes for recitals at college. The claim was that the color difference would draw attention to your feet instead of the singer, since your feet are raised up higher than normally. Over the shoulder dresses, however, I never heard anything about, and explicitly remember at least one woman who wore one, and I at least didn’t notice anyone acting like there was anything wrong. That said, the fact that I remember her so specifically suggests that it was not common. Sure, she was attractive, but she’d be far from the only attractive music major there. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/22 "2017-04-24T17:31:12Z")
> [@Cub\_Mistress](#): > > I thought the off the shoulder dresses/tops were inappropriately casual, but I was more taken aback by the gentlemen wearing hats indoors. I see dressing for various occasions as more of a four way continuum - on one side you have the scale that ranges from “dressed down” to “dressed up” and, on the other end you have “casual” to “business”. I think her outfit was about right on the “dressed up” part of the scale but it was too casual on the 2nd part – she should’ve had a more businesslike dressy outfit for a White House visit. I used to spend a lot of time on these nuances - If I was going to a high end restaurant and a Broadway show with a visiting sales manager and a few clients, I would dress differently than I would if I had been going on a date with the same itinerary. A reception held after a sales awards dinner called for something different than a wedding reception held in the same place. In this case, it’s not even about SPs attire, the whole event seemed weird and vaguely disrespectful in tone – kind of like a big FU to the place Hillary and Obama called home. ---
**Author:** ![South\_Side](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@South\_Side](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/South_Side)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/23 "2017-04-24T23:39:05Z")
I think they were pandering to Donnie Prez for some patronage. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/24 "2017-04-25T00:42:44Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Why does Trump have a gold brick on his desk? > [@mbh](#): > > The “gold brick” looks to me like a humidor. Does Trump smoke? Maybe it’s Trump’s version of Reagan’s jelly bean jar. Even if it’s not actually a gold brick, it’s telling that it’s there at all. It’s the kind of thing children and very stupid poor people think rich people do; if you were drawing a cartoon of a “rich guy,” that’s something you might draw. So the President of the United States of America is a living caricature of a cartoon rich person. Lovely. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/25 "2017-04-25T00:50:22Z")
Actually, upon closer inspection of the photo, and other photos of the President’s desk, it appears to made of wood, and it’s in pictures of Obama’s desk as well. My research has not yet yielded what the object is. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/26 "2017-04-25T00:50:39Z")
As for the object on Trump’s desk: It’s not a humidor (too small) It’s not a brick (too large, too “not square”) It’s not even gold (notice the grain?) It could be a box for a fancy pen, or some paperweight or just some bauble that a CEO might have. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Devil_s_Grandmother)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/27 "2017-04-25T17:10:57Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Why does Trump have a gold brick on his desk? I was all ready to make a joke about how Nugent brought Trump a brick of hash as a gift, but it’s probably a pen box. You can see it in many of the pictures here: > **[whitehousemuseum.org domain name is for sale. Inquire now.](https://www.whitehousemuseum.org/)** > > whitehousemuseum.org is available for purchase. Get in touch to discuss the possibilities! I hope I haven’t been suckered in by a bad site, but looking at the box from this angle it looks like a call button: [http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2017/02/trumps-beautiful-oval-office-phones-and.html](http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2017/02/trumps-beautiful-oval-office-phones-and.html) (Scroll down a bit to the first picture and you can see the seal and red button.) Googling \*presidential call button desk \*takes you to many conspiracy theorists’s web pages. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/28 "2017-04-25T18:24:06Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > Just a general comment here from someone who neither knows nor cares about “fashion” - it seems far too many people don’t know how to dress for certain occasions. I think that part of it is that, over the past 30 years, expectations for attire in the U.S. have, overall, moved to a much more casual assumption. When I started working as a marketing professional in 1989, business attire (i.e., suits and ties for men, either suits or dresses for women) was not only the norm, but to find a professional office in which that “uniform” was not the expectation was pretty extraordinary (at least in the Midwest and East Coast; the West Coast was generally more casual, earlier). By 2000 or so, “business casual” had rapidly become the norm in most offices, to the point where businesses at which business attire was still expected were the exception to the rule (though it was, and is, still the norm in certain fields). Relatedly, it seems like the expectation that one wears similar attire (suits, dresses) to social events like weddings and funerals has often fallen away. As a result, it seems like many people simply don’t own that level of clothing any more – or, particularly for women, if they own anything “dressy,” it’s something more appropriate for a party than for a serious occasion (as Ann Hedonia and salinqmind note). For example: last winter, we went up to a small town in Wisconsin, to attend a memorial service for the mother of one of my best friends from college. My wife asked me what I was going to wear, and my reply was, “I’m wearing a suit, because it’s what’s appropriate. But, I’ll guarantee you that the only other person there who’ll be in a suit will be Brad (my friend’s brother, who’s always been a sharp dresser), and that you’ll see people wearing Packers sweatshirts.” I was correct, on both counts. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950/29 "2017-04-27T01:01:32Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > it seems far too many people don’t know how to dress for certain occasions. I haven’t spent much time in the States recently, but I remember that there used to be strong regional variations in appropriate “business” and “formal” atire. Palin was originally from Alaska. Is there any chance that she was dressed in a way that Alaska would have thought appropriate? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/re-fashion-etiquette-are-off-the-shoulder-tops-dresses-inappropriate-for-dressy-occasions/784950.md?page=1)