Now and then, I’ll hear someone mention something about a “rule” that one is not permitted to wear white garments after Labor Day. I have no idea what this means, beyond a vague notion that being aware of the “rule” is apparently sufficient proof that one has what it takes to hobnob with the “right” set, sartorially speaking.
What does it mean? Is there a rationale? What’s the start date for the acceptable white-clothes window? Do other countries that don’t observe Labor Day have this “rule,” and, if so, when do they put their whites away?
I think the idea behind it is that white is a “summer color,” so wearing it after Labor Day (which is the unofficial end of summer) is impolite/unfashionable/unrefined. It’s a pretty archaic rule that isn’t too widely used these days. I’d assume that the window starts on June 21, the beginning of summer.
Mostly they are talking about white summer weight fabrics. Mostly they mean pants and shoes. Mostly this applies to places with an actual winter climate. Winter whites are the exception. If you live in the Cayman Islands or Hawaii, wear all the summer whites you want all year long.
It just occurred to me that when the “rule” came to be, civilized socieety could be quite a smoky, sooty environment to hang out in (perhaps particularly during the chillier months), and perhaps it was a way of showing some consideration for the people tasked with keeping one’s clothing presentable
You can start wearing white after Memorial Day, but the season ends on Labor Day. My daughter is going to a wedding at the end of this month and is looking for white sandals to wear. I am biting my tongue because she is a grown woman, but it’s hard not to tell her to go with bone.
Nope, the Season of Wearing White begins on Memorial Day. Or began.
The rule lasted a bit longer than the one decreeing that ladies always wore hat & gloves when they went outside. And never wore leopard prints. Not to mention all the compulsory unmentionables. Oh, and not wearing black to a wedding…
I don’t know that gentlemen in white had the same season. Although, always & forever, white shoes & matching belt must be viewed with horror.
The loss of the rules of fashion now allow greater freedom & comfort, but it’s a pity when folks settle for grubby sweatpants or similar style-free attire.
It’s almost impossible for us to imagine a time when social class was reflected in the clothes you wore and your status was almost instantly apparent to everyone who know the code.
Clothing was relatively expensive then. Most working class families might only have one or two sets of clothing in total. A middle class family had a small set.
Upper class families had clothing not merely for every occasion but for every time of day. When they talked about morning coats and evening dress they meant that literally. You were to expected to dress for dinner, which meant that you put on formal clothing significantly different from the office clothes, social outing clothes, or sporting clothes that you had on earlier. Social and sporting clothes were allowed to be less formal, even frivolous by the standards of the day. You wore tennis whites for tennis, not any colors you felt like. You wore white linens and other summer fabrics because they were cooler in the days before air conditioning. And none of that mattered at dinner. You put on heavy formal clothing and sweltered with a stiff upper lip.
Because cities are sited without much regard to temperature and because cities absorb heat and limit cooling breezes, cities got very hot in the summer. Every decent upper class family had a second home in an area by water or up in the woods where the climate was better and the breezes could get through the windows. You moved there during the summer. Not willy-nilly, but on the proper schedule, which came to be mostly Memorial Day to Labor Day. While you were there you could dress down and be sporty, at least if you were young. Then you moved back to the big house and took up fall activities. Mixing seasons was a huge faux pas. You didn’t wear your summer outfits when everyone else was wearing their fall outfits. That could brand you a rebel or worse, poor.
Not wearing white after Labor Day seems to us to be pure silliness, but it was a major social signal in an era when keeping the distinction between Us and Them was about 90% of life. Start mixing with the lower classes and the next thing you know the damned bolshies have taken over.
So, Pai325, given that you seem to think that the rule has some value… Why? So far as I can tell, it doesn’t even rise to the level of an argument from authority, since nobody’s quite sure just who the authority is.
The rule is that if you have grown up with the rules then you know exactly what to do at any time for any occasion. If you don’t observe every rule every day, then you are not part of the rules and none of them should matter to you.
I doubt that any social set in the U.S. today lives by the rules of the 1920s. Back then they had many unpleasant names for people who tried to live by their rules without understanding them.
I think it makes more sense if you don’t think it as a cut off for white, but a cut off for summer clothes. Some fabrics just scream summer - linen and seersucker and light poplin weaves. Light pastel colors and white do too. I think any modern reasonable person would agree it makes more sense to transition those clothes to the closet as the weather actually cools down. All the same, when I see a guy clumsily walking through dirty snow in January in cream colored summer weight pants, he looks awfully silly to me.
You know what my criterion is for wearing summer clothes? How warm it is outside. When it’s warm out, I wear summer clothes, and when it’s cool out, I wear something warmer. I sort of thought that this was intuitively obvious to everyone.
Karl Lagerfeld can suck my cat’s ass. Sweatpants are a sign that I’m warmer and more comfortable and have more sense than to spend the kind of money it costs to buy Karl Lagerfeld clothes.
I have 2 modes, warm and cool. When it’s warm enough I wear long, flowy skirts. When it’s too cool/cold for long, flowy skirts, I wear black or dark blue sweatpants. And I don’t give a rat’s, or my cat’s ass what any fucking asshole snob thinks.
