Having attended a performance of The Nutcracker over the weekend, I’ll add another: Wearing casual clothes to the theater. I’ll give a pass to the group of obviously underprivileged kids, probably from a foster home, who were there for a treat - I’m just glad they get a chance to see the ballet - but the hipster-bro in the cardigan hoodie has no excuse. Dude, you’re at an opening night; put on a damn tie!
This. It makes me sad - it should be a place where I can dress up and look right, but it’s not now. Even at the opera there are people in tracksuits! I don’t want a class barrier where you have to wear something really expensive, but everyone who can afford a ticket to the theatre can afford basic black trousers and a shirt because they are very cheap these days and usable in many circumstances. (Excluding those kids, who have a get out, and most kids do anyway; in the UK, though, they could have come in part of their school uniform if they wanted).
It makes the whole thing less fun if a dress-up place is now dress-down. 
Take heart. Perhaps these are people who really love opera or ballet, but just don’t finding dressing up as much fun as you do (rather than people who were so reluctant to attend they refused to get out of their pajamas).
If they really love something, they’ll adopt its customs. I wouldn’t wear a suit to the Daytona 500…
My face behaves similarly, and I hate it. I want so badly to be able to have a beard that doesn’t look like someone glued pubes to my face. Not that I don’t still try (and fail) from time to time.
Yeah, I remember when pubes glued to the face was TOTALLY tacky. Boy, not anymore, you see it everywhere. I live in the wrong century. 
Or perhaps, customs change. I suspect you will find many fewer outsized ladies’ hats at the opera than you did a hundred years ago. And I don’t know about the Daytona 500, but it wasn’t that long ago that men frequently did wear ties, if not full suits, to baseball games.
Plus, let’s be realistic, Slow Moving Vehicle was talking about The Nutcracker. That’s for those people who go to the ballet once a year.
Those the people I would expect to dress the kids up in velvet dresses and suits. I’d think the people in track suits are the one’s that try to score a ticket at Bostix every weekend.
Yes, exactly. Plus, it was opening night. That’s a little more special, a little more hoity-toity, than, say, a Thursday afternoon matinee.
For the record, I put on a tie and jacket every time I go to the ballet. Which is about five or six times a year.
For the record, I never go to the ballet. I’m a subscriber to the symphony, but prefer my music without all that strenuous bounding and leaping about the stage. It seems quite athletic, but a little unseemly. One might as well go to a basketball game.
True. But in those days men wore suits everywhere. They weren’t wearing them for the baseball game.
Hence the track suits
Such an odd custom. I swear even farmers sometimes wore suits and ties to work in the fields.
I look at old movies set in the South and can’t imagine what the fuck they were possibly thinking. I mean, I have to wear a suit to work most days but my office and car are air-conditioned.
Wool is pretty heavy duty. They didn’t wear the wispy polyester blends you get off the rack at JC Penny’s today. Their suits were designed for active people to wear every day. Also, they probably didn’t wear ties to pitch hay. So imagine working the field in jeans and a denim jacket, only instead of denim they’re made from heavyweight wool. It’s not too absurd, really, when you think about it. They weren’t working in their Sunday best, either.
But in the south, though. :dubious: Yeah, even with seersucker or linen, I’m sure the sweat was ever present.
Well there was this guy.
They may have worn cotton or linen suits. I’ve seen lots of pictures of old events in the tropics, and that’s what they usually wore, and in light colors too.
Back in the old days, women wore dress shields, which were like shoulder pads for your underarms, for a reason.
I for one will be glad when the last necktie in the world is lost or destroyed.
I didn’t read the whole thread, so pardon me if this was mentioned.
Mismatched socks. These days my kids don’t even try to match their socks. In fact, my girls typically have me buy them a pack of socks that has 7 individual socks (not pairs), all different, and then mix and match as they see fit. Its a definite thing, not just laziness.