Dressed for the breadline--Men lining up for bread, Manhattan, NY,
February, 1910
Posted on 06/06/2013 8:48:12 AM PDT by fwdude
This weekend, I will be attending the high school graduation of a young relative, as tens of thousands of others likely will as well. Though these events are a dime a dozen, and a high school graduation doesn't seem to carry the weight of importance that it once did, it seems appropriate to regard the attendance of such an event as a special occasion, special enough to don at least a clean shirt and pants without holes.
But what I expect to see will probably be trumped by even what I've witnessed in past years - people wearing shorts, theme t-shirts, muscle shirts, holey jeans, and flip-flops. At a graduation. Even at college graduations.
What I've noticed over the past several decades is a drastic trend toward an anything-goes attitude toward dress. The last time this drastic a shift seems to have occurred is in the late sixties, when the hippie, commune-living attitude made inroads into society and youth wore whatever they pleased, wherever they pleased, if anything at all.
Today, I see church-goers wear what look like pajamas, short shorts, tube tops, muscle shirts and worse. It's almost like they're defying the traditional "rules." And not only congregants, but pastors and participants seem to be in a contest to see who can dress down the most radically, usually by those who want to be "relevant" to today's youth. (See Ed Young as an example.) I attended a wedding - A WEDDING!!! - several years ago and with very few exceptions, the only people wearing a tie or dress were the marrying couple. Most wore golf shirts, "nice" jeans and tennis shoes. I (wearing my suit) was almost speechless.
Today, there seems to be no venue, no ceremony, no establishment, where manner of dress is any longer important at all. And I see this attitude as directly related to, and caused by, the voracious consumption of society by the rabid, morally-anarchist secularists. Children used to aspire to wear what grownups wore - in Great Britain, young boys were only allowed to wear shorts as appropriate, slacks being a man's attire, and were only allowed to wear such upon attaining "the King's commission." Now, adults seem to want to emulate children, with sagging waistbands, "bling," tatoos and hyper-oversized pants that can't seem to decide if they're shorts or not shorts.
My question is this: is there ANY event or occasion when it is appropriate to dress in other than ordinary, daily apparel, without undue coercion? Or, put another way, is there any occasion when daily, casual wear is inappropriate?
I can already hear the rebuttals by cultural relativists: "but every era has its trends which fly in the face of tradition!" True, but there were still differences in the manner of dress according to occasion. Now, there appear to be none whatsoever. A standardless society when appearances are concerned. Once, even the poorest farmer owned at least one suit, a tie, and a good pair of dress shoes. Everyone was expected to have the ability to look presentable at the most elegant occasion, and all but the poorest (by real poor standards of the day, not today's "opulent poor") could satisfy this minimal standard. Today, I know scores of people who own not one suit, tie, or dress shirt.
I truly believe this attitude mirrors the standardless "morals" we are seeing sweep across every institution which once stood for something. The military might be one last holdout, but even that will see changes - be certain of it.
You are right. Its just one symptom of many of our decline as a society.
I reject the poverty notion. My Dad grew up a younger sister, raised by a widowed, single mother in the 1930’s. Moved home usually every 6 months. A really good Christmas gift was an apple. The stories of “poverty” were striking to me, and completely incomprehensible to my children today.
Nonetheless, he went to school wearing a coat and tie, every day. The public school insisted on it, his mother insisted on it.
I am a contract software engineer. I wear a white shirt, tie and sport coat every day. When asked why by my clients my reply is “I am a professional. You pay me a lot of money to be here and this is how I make my living. So I will dress in a professional manner.”
It makes my eyes roll when peers show up for work in shorts, sandals and t-shirts.
And quite often my level of dress becomes contagious and the other men I work with will start dressing much more appropriately.
Funny thing, the women almost always dress professionally.
You are offended. Check.
What you’ve not done successfully is to cast this as a moral issue. Bad taste does not equal lack of morality.
I’m with Thoreau on this: Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes (actually was my high school yearbook quote in 1976). Still feel that way today.
Dressed for the breadline--Men lining up for bread, Manhattan, NY,
February, 1910
“Its poverty”
A lot of the casual wear people buy doesn’t come cheap!
“Bad taste does not equal lack of morality.”
Bad taste does not recognize quality.
I'm not sure that this economic "slump" is comparable to that one -- I've heard it said of the Depression that "you could still get meat for a nickel, the problem was there weren't any nickels"... that somewhat indicates a sort of price-stability. This time though, there's been a lot of inflation on food-prices in the last few years (some bad enough that they changed the sizes being sold instead of altering the price too much), couple that with the absence of 'nickels' (jobs) and there's a case for this being substantially different than the Depression.
Oh, really?
You just put on your coat and hatIn 1958, one dressed well in public even when performing routine chores. When we went shopping at the May Company department store in downtown LA during those days, we would always wear coats and ties.
And walk yourself to the laundromat
That must have been traumatic.
Nothing offends you. Check.
I have noticed that at college football games, particularly in the student section, fans are wearing football jerseys. I'm old school, and to me, jerseys should only be worn by those on the field.
I’d never wear it. Part of it is regional, here in Tucson if you wear a suit and you’re not in the finance or funeral industries people think it’s weird. Part of it is just me. I’ve had good suits for weddings and yeah they were actually more comfortable than one would expect, but they’ll never be as comfortable as pants and a shirt, and of course there’s the noose. Never liked ties, it’s just a slipknot around the neck that falls in your food to me.
A long time ago Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant article about the rise of Intel. A big part of that article was discussing the culture clash between two guys who grew up in farm country and went to CA and never wore suits or ties trying to scare up venture capital from New York financiers who’d never dealt with people not in suits before. At the time I first read that article I worked for a software startup and we interacted with investors all the time, and other than their much nicer shoes and watches they dressed like us. They didn’t need to impress anybody anymore, and we were used to impressing people with our brains not our clothes. Now I work on hundred million dollar software in comfortable pants and a t-shirt, clothes don’t make me more or less capable of doing my job.
drawbacks of typing quickly on an iPad.
With all due respect, your pictures are exceptions. Music concerts and Occupy protests are not normative indicators of mainstream dress, regardless of how those specific instances correlate with immoral behavior.
I am not saying that standards of dress have not decline. That is patently obvious. But I am reminded of a comment from Chuck Smith, whose Calvary Chapel church grew from a couple hundred people to become one of the original mega-churches in the late 60s and early 70s. When his elders complained that the carpets were being damaged by all the barefoot hippies coming to church, his reply was, “Then tear out the carpets.”
I've tried using my wife's Kindle a few times. Virtual keyboards are not for me. When I went to get a new smartphone I asked the sales clerk one question: what's the biggest keyboard you have?
Exactly.
And Tom Wolfe may well be the best dressed person in America. :-)
Or flying on a plane, you would dress up.
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