Some other posts have alluded to this, but I wanted to clarify that this would normally only apply to formal events where two guests were wearing the same dress. Simply passing someone on the street who’s wearing the same outfit would be more a “Huh, that’s a funny coincidence” situation, and even if it happened with two coworkers who were going to be in the office all day together it probably would still just be considered amusing. “Ha ha, we’re twins!”
The only way I can see a regular woman getting embarrassed about having the same casual or work outfit as another woman would be if she really disliked the other woman and didn’t want to seem connected to her in any way, or if the other woman was much older or known for poor taste in clothing and this made the first woman worry the outfit must be frumpier/tackier than she’d realized. But otherwise I don’t think it would be a big deal for most women, nor would it be especially unusual for two women in casual or professional gear to wind up wearing pretty much the same thing. I’m sure there have been many times when a coworker and I were both wearing nearly identical outfits consisting of fairly generic items like black slacks and a red sweater. A more distinctive item like a t-shirt from a particular event would be more likely to serve as a conversation starter (“Hey, that’s my favorite band too!”) than cause embarrassment.
Others have already offered most of the reasons why a woman at a formal event might be embarrassed to see another woman in the same gown. I’ll add just one more: because if you’ve got two or more women in the same place in the same gown, they’re likely to look like runaway bridesmaids!
Cordelia: Where did you get that dress? This is a one-of-a-kind Todd Oldham. Do you know how much this dress cost? Is this a knockoff? (checks the label) This is a knockoff, isn’t it?! Some cheesy knockoff! This is exactly what happens when you sign these free trade agreements!
And Firefly - from ‘Shindig’. Setup for those who haven’t seen the episode - Kaylee’s excited that she got to go to the ball and buy a fancy dress with a big hoop skirt - and then she runs into a mean rich girl…
Of course, in this situation, nobody else was wearing the same outfit, but it shows the same kind of ‘custom tailored is the only way’ snobbery that WhyNot was referring to.
I had this happen in college. I was performing in our general recital that day, so I dressed up: white ruffled blouse, pearls, maroon skirt, nylons and black flats. Lo and behold, another girl comes down to the lobby wearing the exact same outfit, right down to the pearls. Only difference: my blouse had long sleeves and hers were short. She was also performing in general recital that day. The guy who made the programs noticed, and since she was a total snob, he put her later on in the program so it would look like she dressed like me. The reactions in the audience were priceless.
I recall a comedian once, Jeff Foxworthy I think, who did a routine on exactly this. His point being that while two women might get upset, two guys showing up dressed the same are going to think it’s great. They didn’t screw up too badly deciding what to wear. And by the end of the evening they might well have a new best friend.
I’ve been to two events where people were wearing the same dress. At the first one, in college in the late 70’s the two girls were embarassed and just stayed away from each other the whole night.
The second time was at a cotillion in the late 80’s, and I was one of the women. We made a point of congratulating each other on our good taste, and then avoided standing near each other in case of photographs…wouldn’t want people to think it was a wedding of some sort! I do remember regretting my choice of dress once I saw her in it…she looked much better, but we both looked pretty silly. We had tried too hard for the Southern belle look, and failed. Plus, I knew exactly where she had gotten the dress, and how much she had paid.
I was once invited to a “dress as your favorite literary device” party (yeah, yeah, we were nerds in college, OK). I showed up in black with a big blue “4” on my shirt in duct tape. When I walked into the room, I bumped into a good friend of mine who was ALSO wearing all black with “4” on her shirt.
“You BITCH!” I cried. “Hussy!” she screamed. We spent an entertaining 30 seconds simultaneously verbally bitch-slapping each other over the outfits while the rest of the room turned to watch. Suddenly, she stopped. “I’m a metaphor,” she said, matter-of-factly. I stopped. “I’m foreshadowing,” I said.
Oh! Everyone laughed. We hugged and went on with the evening
I must be an even bigger nerd than you/your friends, because my immediate reaction to this story was “Okay, ‘foreshadowing’ works, but ‘metaphor’ should have been the number 5, or maybe a big 4 made up of a bunch of little 4s.”
That’s where I am on it all. As an overweight woman, I tend to be the less-good-looking one, so I tend to be the embarrassed one. But I don’t really care that much about fashion, so the embarrassment wears off pretty quickly.
