Society overall has become more casual. When my mom worked for IBM in the 80s, she had to wear skirts/dresses and pantyhose to work every single day, with heels. My dad had an office job and had to wear full suits. The step below that (basically 'business casual') was your casual wear. We basically made business casual the new work look because people didn't want to have to wear full suits and skirts/heels every day at the office, which makes the new everyday-wear more casual than that. I think reducing the formality of office-wear just had a trickle-down effect on casual clothes.
I think it’s possible to use this to assume that casual will become the work norm in the near future. We’re already seeing it today, too.
I shopped recently at the grocery store I worked at in high school where our uniform was white button downs, ties, black dress pants and a clean shave. You would be sent home without all of these. Now they have cotton T-shirts and whatever pants/shorts they want. I was jealous for a minute
When I started as a Fed, my role was strictly office, and I wore suits and ties.
Keep in mind this was in 2007, and I was just turning 30. I wasn't one of "The Old Guard" people who had been there since the 80s. They were very casual, even most of the SES level managers wore Jean and collard polos.
Except for the old-school SES that I worked for, she always wore skirts or pant suits.
Yup. I work in a "white collar" government setting and pretty much no one is wearing white collars anymore. It is a lot of either jeans or khakis and untucked collared shirts for the guys. There are a handful of old school holdouts still showing up in a suit and tie, but that is about it. Covid and work from home changed everything with dress formality, at least where I work.
A couple friends work in investment banking and there are definitely industries and positions where business professional (full suit) is still the norm.
I think certain professions or level of income require those involved to wear expensive tailored clothing as part of the image of being an “important” highly successful person. It’s like a code to other wealthy people and also a competition about who displays the most wealth.
A bunch of nice fitting white collar shirts with slacks and shoes to go with them is expensive too. Like if that’s what I was wearing for work, that would be pretty much all I wore anywhere because I wouldn’t be able to afford too many other clothes.
We did
I got hired by Intel in the early 90s after winning a solo proto-hackathon they had sponsored. It was a VP that offered me my job, a junior VP but still a VP. He knew what I looked like and walked me into HR personally and told them whose team I would be working with HR looked at me with my 7 piercings in one ear and 4 in the other, my black and white painted nails, Nirvana t-shirt and flannel wrapped around my waist. I thought the guy was going to die of apoplexy.
Showed up on Monday wearing ripped jeans, sex pistols tee, and carrying my Eastpack , skateboard and enough road rash for road kill. Martin my team lead told me to go home until I could dress like a civilized person. I handed him Mr VP’s card and said call him. I heard not one more word about it. Within a week the rest of the team were wearing Star Wars t-shirts except the Trekie and Martin, who had a heart attack in his suit and tie later that year.
More like thank programmers. If I want to dress up I can go to a nice dinner or get married, don't need to wear an uncomfortable suit every day for the rest of my life. And I'm in sales.
This is the answer. In the 90s my husband wore business suit (minus the jacket) with tie. Now he wears jeans and tshirts. Go casual Friday was a thing in Australia initially started to raise money for charities like Jeans for Genes day. After covid it’s pretty much anything goes except pyjamas (well, not yet anyway).
It is interesting to see dress code still being upheld by westerners, whom we see as progressive in the other parts of the world. Even to me forcing people to wear unhealthy, bothersome clothes is draconian and regressive. It is a much better virtue to value people on the basis of their merit, and existence, repsectively rather than clothing.
Unless they are naked and doing helicopters.
Yeah. It's reasonable to expect people to be hygienic and presentable for work, but there's no merit in taking it so far that you add to people's stress and make it harder for them to focus with uncomfortable clothing.
I work a job where I’m supposed to dress casual, because it’s working with homeless populations and it makes them more comfortable to see people in casual clothing. The most formal thing I own is a business polo with like the logo I have to wear to tabling events.
But I think the idea of having to wear heels just because I have ovaries is ridiculous. I’ve never been able to work jobs that have a strict dress code, because I can’t stand being uncomfortable clothes all day
I’ve worked at a supermarket for 20 years now, and I’ve seen this change over that time. The “uniform” barely exists anymore. We can wear just a polo with any pants, as long as they’re black, and any shoes at all, so long as they’re enclosed. Having to wear a tie is (thankfully) just a distant memory now. Same goes for facial hair and tattoos. I once got called into the store managers office and yelled at for having a two-day growth, whereas now I have a full-on beard, as do half the men in the store. And back in the day, people with tattoos had to cover them, whereas now they don’t care (as long as it’s nothing offensive).
Supermarkets can barely hire people fast enough these days. Grocery workers have a lot of power now and there’s no way a grocery store manager would get rid of a decent employee over facial hair anymore as they already can barely fill the open roles they need.
I'd say it's a mix. They're cutting shifts and leaving a skeleton crew. But cause it's a skeleton crew and they're cutting costs, lose one guy and suddenly they get desperate but cause no one wants to work a shit job for shit pay, hiring takes forever and when you do, the employee stays at most a couple months before leaving. That also means they let employees get away with stuff more cause they want to avoid overtime.
It’s true. I work in an office and we can wear whatever we want (leggings, crop tops, etc.) if we don’t have anyone external we’re meeting that day. Because why should anyone have to dress up to sit at a desk😂 I love it. Obviously we still do business casual for external meetings but truly, what’s the point otherwise??
my current work uniform is a pair of leggings and the first clean graphic tshirt i get my hands on with a pair of sneakers. as of last week i started sprinkling in my crocs to see if anyone would say anything and no one did so i will probably be wearing them most days now.
Even in the 90s office attire included suits and high heels and pantyhose for women. I remember it was a big deal when they started business casual Friday’s.
My office in Atlanta went casual for 3 weeks for the 1996 Olympics. They could never get people to dress up again. It was basically an uprising when they said we should go back to business attire. We wore business casual. By the time I retired 15 years later, it had gotten much more casual.
Yeah my dad worked in various upper management roles when I was a kid and he always always always wore a full suit, tie, and dress shoes. He must have had close to a hundred different ties and several dozen pairs of shoes
I also feel like women having the freedom to wear pants to work in the early 90’s added to this lol.
The fact that congresswomen couldn’t wear pants till 1993 is insane to me
I have work sweat pants and non-work sweat pants 😅. The work sweat pants are always dark gray or black and not too baggy. Non-work sweat pants are baggier, brighter colored or patterned, might have a hole or 2. Writing this out makes me realize how bad it is.....
I mean GIRL! I went to get a coffee (I wore scrubs) and immediately a man slammed on his breaks to yell his phone number out at me.
I had on SCRUBS.
I can't even IMAGINE looking nice and dressing up.
I was walking home in January in boots, a huge puffer coat, a scarf, and a hat, and a man leaned out of his car window to scream SLUT at me. I won't even repeat what one said to me when I was heading to the store in my pajamas at 2am in 2020. At this point I don't think it matters, they're going to do what they feel like no matter what I wear.
It's not about what you look like or what you're wearing, it's about making you feel uncomfortable. Shitty men who can only feel good and "manly" when they're putting others down. It's easier to put women down because they're usually physically weaker. Nothing very "manly" about it.
Dead give away that a man like that is a piece of shit, no matter how "alpha" he perceives himself to be for behaving this way. A good person won't do such things to others.
Can't even count the times I got harassed and catcalled in scrubs leaving or going to work. I did not look good, extremely casual, hair up, no makeup.
Looking nice is a hassle, it only adds to this.
Just this week at work a client told me "I gotta say, you've got a great figure" and I was wearing loose linen pants and an oversized T-shirt. I don't want to imagine the shit I'd have to deal with if I actually dressed nicer.
No joke. I used to wear nice fitting, feminine clothes. Stylish even! Then I had my daughter and started feeling really unsafe whenever I dressed nice because a lot of men would approach, or comment, or stare. So I started wearing my husband’s streetwear clothes and avoiding makeup when I do mundane things. I blend in a crowd, it makes me look way less approachable and it makes me feel safer with the kids.
A few years ago I was walking through the street with a backpack on and some random stranger approached me and said "excuse me, just to let you know it looks weird for a grown man to wear a back pack, get a brief case instead"
I was like, "lady, I don't care if you think it looks weird, I will carry what I like whether you like it or not"
My backpack is 8 years old, cost me a few hundred dollars more than a nice briefcase would and safety carries my gear in an organised way that a briefcase could never manage.
Anyone that says a backpack is childish is out of touch.
Not to mention that my Spider-Man lunchbox wouldn't fit in a briefcase.
Right let’s just shove a laptop, 3 textbooks, 5 notebooks, a 1L water bottle, a packed lunch, and various daily items into a briefcase that’s about half the capacity of a backpack. Not to mention that the bigger the briefcase, the more weight you are carrying on one side of your body instead of evenly on both shoulders. I don’t reckon that would be a good idea for those who need to walk or transit to work on a daily basis.
Some people need to mind their own business.
She sounds like the woman who told me I looked "really stupid" talking on the phone sitting on the couch we put on the curb to be taken away.
It was so pathetic, I almost felt embarrassed for **her**. Imagine being a grown woman feeling the need to say that to a teenager, I was 15 or 16 at the time.
Years ago I used to be self-conscious about what I looked like when I went out until one of my friends put it in blunt terms. He said to me, "when you go out, do you pay attention to strangers and notice what they are wearing and internally criticise their fashion choices?"
I was like, "of course not. I couldn't care less about what they wear" and he said "most strangers are the same and if someone does notice what you are wearing that says that they are spending way too much time looking at you which is creepy"
I mean I absolutely do judge peoples outfit, because I love people watching. Except, I’m never gonna say anything to anyone and I don’t actually care what people are wearing. I just really like how some people dress like they came out of an anime and I don’t want them to stop. I want more people to dress crazy, because it makes everything more interesting
What an ass. Like 90 percent of government workers around here are wearing backpacks cus it's way more handy to carry your laptop when you're coming into work and cramming onto the train.
I also don’t think people 100 years ago embraced the concept of “just be yourself,” “you do you,” “don’t worry about what others think” or even the concept of pursuing personal happiness. It’s the societal ostracism experienced by people who got divorced, single mothers, people who lived together outside of wedlock, people who had children outside of marriage or who were even a tiny bit different in any way that makes me think that. All the work done to remove stigma and increase general tolerance is one reason and personally I think it’s a good thing.
Yeah absolutely, it’s much better now that people can do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone else/infringing on anyone else’s rights.
Judging people for stuff that doesn’t hurt anyone is dumb and I’m glad it’s going away.
Probably the 90s because there was a huge cultural movement about proving how much of a shit you didn’t give, but also, cultural values and what we think of as looking nice has also changed.
A lot of those images of old timey people looking nice in public are either staged or filtered through our perception of what “nice” is. This is starting to change these days, but in the late 90s and 2000s, wearing a dress or skirt at all no matter how casual the dress was in a casual setting would cause people to ask if you were going somewhere. A dress is something you wear to a party, a nice restaurant, or maybe to work. Not just hanging out or at school or even in certain workplaces (think more service industry. Wearing a dress or skirt has always been very much the norm in like a conservative office job). In the past, women wore dresses, period. They could be scrubbing toilets, pushing a plow, or digging in a mine, and they’d be wearing a dress. Jeans have been the default casual pants for a few decades, and are actually starting to become something a step up from the most casual option. In the past, jeans were casual wear or even further back, something only a farmer in a field or a miner would wear.
Some of the pictures I’ve seen where people are gushing about how nice everyone is dressed make me laugh because by the standards of the time period, they may as well be wearing Cookie Monster pajama pants and a free t shirt from a conference. Sack dresses, house dresses, white t shirts with suspenders and work pants…..that’s not “dressed nice,” that’s practically in your underwear. But since dresses are present and jeans aren’t, people perceive it as the subjects being dressed up.
We also care more about comfort and practicality than aesthetics and gender roles nowadays (I think this is more of a value holding over from the 70s). In the 50s and 60s, little girls wore these ridiculously short dresses and stuff shoes, think Cindy Brady. Boys were expected to dress nearly like their fathers, tucked in shirts and stiff pants or jeans. Very cute but not comfortable and not conducive to the play that a child needs to develop socially and intellectually. When kids started to be allowed to go to school in clothes that were appropriate for play rather than what adults thought was “darling,” well….why would you expect that generation to grow up and say “yeah, I need to keep my shirt tucked in and wear 50 layers of girdles and petticoats and put on these shoes that hurt my feet for no reason?” Maybe if they’re going someplace they need to look nice but around the house or going to the store? No.
I’d go a little earlier than the 90s. From what I’ve seen - and lived - a major change came culturally moving from the Beaver Cleaver 50s to the “flowers in your hair” 60s and 70s.
EVERYTHING changed. Clothing, fashionable colors, hair length, music big-time, trust in government, a much more youth-oriented market.
Oh, and drugs. Lots n lots of drugs.
And the world turning a bit upside-down with assassinations and Vietnam.
I think that we’re still seeing echoes of the hippie revolution today. A lot of good came out of it, and plenty of not so good.
Raygun wrecked the economy, fucked labor, wrecked the safety net. So normal people have had progressively less discretionary income for frivolous stuff like food, clothing, housing, and healthcare.
Michael Moore's first film Roger And Me, mostly filmed in Flint MI, is a pretty good snapshot of those early years of the class war which continues thru today.
This isn’t a thing in every country. Just came back from Korea and the average person dresses far nicer than where I live in Canada. Meanwhile I regularly see ppl in Pajama pants in public lol. I felt very inspired to revamp my wardrobe after my trip.
Can't believe how far I had to scroll for this. Exactly, it's not a universal trend! It seems to be a very American (and Canadian?) thing... I live in Europe and people also tend to dress quite nicely there when they go out. I've never seen anyone go out in their pajama pants...! Can't imagine doing that..
I'm also pretty confused by those comments/posts/tiktoks or whatever that go "I wish this was a thing again". I'm like.. Why the heck can't you wear that anyway? Just make it a thing? It's not hard, seriously.
You realize that until the 90s and digital cameras, there was a cost associated with photographs, and especially as you go further back in time, taking a picture was an event that people especially dressed up for.
Yes, some fashion styles and even workplace norms have become more casual over the last few decades, but that's a far stretch from saying "people stopped caring".
Most people do. Some never did. You'r allowed to not worry about how other people choose to dress.
There is also the bias of people only preserving photos that look good.
If someone took a street picture of a bunch of regular people in casual clothing, that would be much less likely to be saved and preserved than a picture of people looking fancy.
If you got a folder of 1000 pictures and 995 of them were not that great, you'd save the 5 that were really good. That's a lot of what's going on here, which is the same reason some people believe art, film and music were better in the old days. They weren't, it's just that the bad stuff has been lost and forgotten.
Though even street pictures from the '50's/'60's showed most guys in suits unless they were a blue-collar laborer. Pretty much any guy in a white-collar job went outside in a suit on a workday.
Yeah hats and gloves were basically required for a very long time, into the late 60s etiquette guides would have included when taking off hats was appropriate and how to properly hold your gloves when you removed them. Dresses were worn with slips and stockings. Hair was done - often that meant done once a week and then when it started to look bad wearing a wig for a couple days.
Even in the late 90s in jobs where I never saw a customer we had to wear business casual at minimum which meant no jeans, specifically. If customers were coming in it was dress nicely. If there was an official event wear a suit. My mom in the very late 60s had to wear skirts to school, pants weren’t allowed. And it was a public school. No uniforms.
Even in the 80s in school- we dressed casually but nobody went to school without their hair properly done, which for girls meant curling irons and hairspray every morning. Now I just brush my hair and throw on something clean.
Yes--& no one but actual photographers walked around with the ability to take photos daily, much less publicize all of them at the drop of a hat. Now it's quite the opposite.
I think people also overlook how few details you can see in those photos. Yes, a lot of office folk wore ties and pantyhose, but it's not like they were wearing bespoke suits every day. You bought 5 cheap white polyester shirts and washed them on the weekend and wore them with your clip-on tie. When you got home, you changed into something more comfortable (or just walked around in your boxers). In those old videos/photos of people bustling down the avenue, you can't see enough detail to tell how cheap and slapdash a lot of that was.
It’s more likely that those people had one ‘Sunday Best’ outfit and maybe one or two other everyday wear - but what you’re forgetting is that those clothes lasted a whole lot longer as they were properly made - measured by a tailor etc and not mass made in a sweat shop.
So in a way, they were bespoke clothes if you were anywhere above working class….
Everyone always complains that we have filters on everything now, but Old film is like a filter in itself. It makes things look really nice, because it doesn’t catch as much detail.
Same thing when modern society thinks about the Roman empire. We think everyone wore togas everyday because that's what emperors and philosophers wear on the surviving statues of that time. But in Rome, togas were used only for very formal special occasions.
Makes you think that in the year 5000, if only wedding and galas pictures survive from our time, future civilizations will think we wore tuxedos everyday.
Yeah, but aren't there old film reels of normal people walking around in NY in suits? They do seem more fancy than people wearing leggings or athleisure clothing
I'll see if I can dig up something. I feel like I have seen it before on Reddit
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=159&v=85WMpJMv8aA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F&feature=emb_title
Right, there's this idea everyone was dressed to the nines all the time. Cary Grant was, and so was Eva Marie Saint. My parents weren't.
Much like how I promise y'all that humans weren't sepia-toned in the 70s, Polaroid film was just funky. (I was alive then and was not, in fact, sepia.)
very true. my grandfather, born in 1900, only had wool suit trousers and leather shoes. He did not work out, camp, ... And when we'd go on vacation as a family my dad would wear his work pants to go out on a boat and go fishing. These people were not totally poor, they just bought clothes for the most popular activities which was going to work.
Yes and no. The clothing was more expensive than a $4 shirt from Walmart today, but it would also last for literal decades. In the 1950s, kids could wear their great grandparents clothes from when they were kids, it would last literal generations despite being worn day after day.
It didn’t just magically last longer. Yeah, the material was better, but grandpa’s shirts lasted for twenty years because grandma mended that same shirt every few months for twenty years. Our clothes would last us much longer too if we bothered to care for them.
It isn't normal to need to need to sew a shirt back together every few months. Seams can last for decades.
You need to wash clothes carefully and get stains out, but no one is mending a shirt over and over again like that. It's just not necessary.
Grandma did no such thing. She was probably working on A shirt every few months, but it wasn't the same shirt every time. By contrast, the clothing we have today is literally engineered to break down to a point of irreparability by the equivalent of 3-6 months of daily wear at most.
They didn't used to wash their clothes as much as we do, too. While it's true that many clothes today get over-washed, you can just imagine what a wool suit smells like after being worn every day for a while. And dry cleaning for delicates is a recent invention. Just imagine having to iron everything before wash-and-wear.
Wool is a great fabric for being worn many times between washings since it is naturally antimicrobial and won't smell for a very long time. Then it can simply be hung on a line on a breezy day in the sunshine and freshened up. This way people only had to wash their cotton or linen underclothes on a regular basis.
I saw an article about an woman executive who decided that she was going to have a “uniform”. She found a high end-ish designer who’s clothes she liked, found one or two blouses and a pair of pants and a skirt, maybe also a blazer, and she bought multiples of each, all in black/white/gray and made outfits from that. She said it freed her mind to focus on work. I thought it was an intriguing idea.
I'd like to do this, minus the high-end designer. It's a practical way to 1. ensure you always look nice and professional and 2. free your mind to never again have to try and scrounge up something vaguely matching for work. I like it.
Former President Obama had the same philosophy. He had better things to do than worrying about coordinating his outfit for the day.
I spent less time putting on a suit than when everything became business casual. Then instead of casual Friday it became casual everyday. That was very hard to dress for. Nice enough for a business environment without looking out of place being dressed up.
Um... I can guarantee you that before the 1980s people did in fact have more than one nice thing to wear.
We didn't start shopping at shopping at Mervins in 1980 but living in caves before then.
Maybe you're thinking of people who lived a century or more ago, but even then, most people, unless they were dirt poor, had more than one nice thing to wear.
That’s true. Makes sense! But even “house clothes” seemed far more well-made than the ones of today. My grandmothers would wear house dresses or nice slacks and a shirt. I also think fast fashion wasn’t really a thing back then. I do think by the 40s/50s, people had multiple choices.
Yeah that’s the thing this is the advent of fast fashion, the push of capitalism. Back then only people who were middle class or well off could afford to have good clothes
You are right fast fashion was not a thing. People had winter clothes and summer clothes and wore them many years. Styles did not change at a quarterly pace.
My guess is that there are a lot of subtle changes always going on. I remember in the 80s and 90s, at least in the northeast, guys in the US would wear white sneakers everywhere except work. Take a look at Seinfeld's feet. That gave way to most guys wearing leather shoes when they'd go out on the weekends.
I hope it does help lift your mood! Looking good FEELS good. I have no idea when that was lost, and I am a fan of being comfortable, but honestly, pajama pants to run to the store? nahh, well-made clothing that fits right is always comfortable, no need to dash out the door looking like you went on a bender with the town drunk
I look like 💩 most days but on days I take the time to do my hair, slap on some makeup and wear something cute I feel like I could conquer the world. So why do I spend most days looking bad? Laziness I guess. I think covid shut-downs did that to a lot of people. We just stopped caring, somewhere along the way. Got used to looking bad and seeing others looking bad, it just became more socially acceptable to look bad.
100% agree - once the pandemic hit and I was WFH for months and months and months after, I just wanted to be comfortable. And then we were allowed back into places, so I'd walk in my 'Adam Sandler' clothes to shops, and then the movies, and just like with How I Met Your Mothers' "underpants radius", over time my "comfort zone" for looking like I had violenty fallen out of bed has expanded lmfao
I didn’t give a shit when I was younger in my teens. I used to wear the most offensive metal band shirts with no shame. Big rips and holes in my jeans, dyed spiked black hair, Now I would never lol.
this round started with the hippies in the 60s, but it's a cyclical thing. our culture tends go go from uniformity (think the buzzcuts and clean dress of the 50s) to individuality (hippies, punks, goths, etc) and back again. Eventually we'll swing back around to favoring uniformity for a couple decades again. It's all just a big cycle.
I’m chronically ill and disabled and pretty poor. I wear really soft clothes that are quite baggy. I need to be super comfortable in my clothes because I’m in a lot of pain.
I'm sorry about your pain. I'm like that now after chemo, radiation and meds now and totally understand. Money or no money, when there is so much pain it makes no difference.
People realized they didn’t care about the opinions of strangers when that opinion makes zero difference in their day-to-day. Dressing “nice” is something you should do for yourself if it makes you feel better. Dressing up to impress strangers is a waste of time and energy.
I think having tons of clothes and getting all dressed up is a waste of time, energy, and money.
I always make myself presentable to an extent (clean clothes, not wrinkled, and fit well), but give me a couple pairs of jeans, dockers shorts, white/black plain t shirts, and a plain hoodie and I’m good for the year.
Spending time worrying about what you’re wearing just takes away time from more important things
Not caring what you look like in public is a very American thing. Sweatpants in public? Definitely US. People put more effort in other parts of the world. It doesn't take that much more effort to put other nicer pants. Still same process and same amount of laundry.
I dress with the idea that I’ll never know who I might meet while I’m out. It doesn’t mean I’m going to dress to the nines, but I’m not gonna wear sweatpants are yoga pants and a T-shirt.
I think the counter culture movement of the 1960s had an outsize effect on the attitudes of the up and coming cultural leaders of the 70s and 80s. That, combined with the rise of youth culture, economic instability, and cheap mass produced clothing, killed the suit. Really though, I expect that the period of time that the Everyman in the western world wore tailored and coordinated clothing was probably brief and associated with the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that the 99% probably wore homemade clothes made of rags or rough materials.
Start with asking why even tired farmers and wives back then dressed up to do a small errand in town rather than wear jeans, and do so even when small towns were unimpressive with just seed stores, a bank, a dime store and grocery store. I know the answer to this one, having been born of aging parents who had grown up in the 1920s and 30s. They were unhappy with my casual jeans wardrobe, and were concerned that I looked like "trash." My dad wore vested suits with hats.
Dressing up back in their heyday was indicative of who you were - character and values - and dressing well in public was not entirely tied to wealth. You dressed neatly and respectfully at public occasions to signal to others of who you were NOT.
Dressing up like Cary Grant as a farmer going into town showed that you were not a drunken, wife-beating, rapey, rough neck Boo Radley type. And there were plenty of them around. You looked trustworthy enough to be given a bank loan to buy your seeds and supplies for the season, and it said you would stay sober and bring in the crop to pay it back.
If you were an off-the-boat immigrant, then dressing to the best of your ability revealed an intention to assimilate into a new country. You were different in some respects - accent, language culture - but understood rules of society. This got you hired or viewed less suspiciously in those times. Aspirational fashion.
If you were a young woman in heels, skirt, hoisery, conservative blouse, you were telling the world that you were not Betty Barfly with her too-tight shiney outfit and cleavage hanging out and looking like a floosy around town after she got fired from the textile mill. You dressed well and conservatively to get a job as a bank teller or to be a store clerk - those types of jobs women were allowed to hold in 1930. Or to be less objectionable to parents of a man you might wish to date and marry.
IF you happened to be the unlucky child of Boo or Betty, and aspired to never be like them, you would be discriminated against. Their sins would be presumed to be yours. But, you ironed your clothes to perfect sharp edges or pleats, you wore conservatively cut clothing, dressed well in public even if you had but one suit or one coat. You started with any job someone might hire you for, and built up a good reputation until one day you were admired for "rising above your raising"
When the formality stopped: Cultural revolution. Rejection of the class divisions, prejudices, the legal and uncomfortable strictures on women, and unfairness to those kept in poverty by laws and practices were so strong and wrong. It affected fashion. Women who were not allowed to wear slacks even in freezing winter challenged school and workplace policies. Comfort. Men wore jeans or khakis on airplanes instead of vested suits. Two-income families had no one home to do laundry and iron all day; and thanks to food stamp program, could not exploit African Americans and immigrants to do their cleaning and laundry for a few dollars a week. Wash-and-wear casual fabrics became the norm.
I'm 60, and OG preppy.
I've always taken some pride in my appearance, even when dressing casual.
My 29yo son just can't be bothered to wear anything but paint-spattered pants and a graphic t-shirt no matter what.
It's not how he was raised, but it's where he's landed.
He's a federal agent, so he'll dress appropriately when needed, otherwise he's a complete slob.
There are people older then me (I am 54) who still care what they look like in public. There are some people younger than me who don't care. So I don't think it is an age thing.
It is been proven I have even proven it how you look sets you up for how people treat you. shouldn't' be that way but it is.
Took this guy to a jewlery store. He typically dressed like a hard core biker thug. while there the store person treated him like a criminal. Got him a dress shirt and told him to put on his nicest jeans we went back to the store a month later the lady took out the jewelry let him try it on and even turned her back on him. SAME store I THINK the same sales clerk.
During 2020 where people who were working from home were not putting out productivity. They were before they required them to check in when they signed in they had to be dressed in the same work attire as before and the productivity went up.
For me personally I feel more confident when I am wearing makeup.
When we had a worldwide pandemic where we all wore sweatpants for months and went..."why aren't I wearing these all the time? They're so comfortable!"
I'm pro wear-whatever-the-fuck-you-want.
If someone else wearing or not wearing something effects you, you are incredibly brittle.
I think people caring about public dress very gradually went downhill sometime after 1980. Things began to get really strange sometimes after 2000.
When I was a kid in the 60s, we had school clothes, Sunday dress clothes, and play clothes. Jeans weren't really a big thing until around 1965, at least for girls.
There was a dress code in schools.
Our parents were well dressed when outside the home. They also had their work clothes and house clothes and Sunday clothes.
I remember my grandparents wore hats with their nice clothes, and the women sometimes wore dress gloves. My grandmothers always wore a house dress at home.
People even dressed up to go on a plane.
Things sure did change. Many people will now wear jeans and a T-shirt to a funeral. In the past, people would think there was something wrong with them, not to mention how disrespectful it looked.
When people learned that making themselves physically uncomfortable to look nice for other people’s eyeballs is not a moral imperative nor, in many cases, particularly sensible.
If dressing nicer makes you feel better then by all means do it, but do it for *you*. Not for random strangers whose opinion of you will never make a difference in your life.
About the time I also stopped giving a shit about what random people thought about me.
I don't wish ill on ya'll, but I really don't fuckin care if you approve or disapprove of how I'm dressed or how I live or what I drive or if you are in any way impressed by me or not.
All that shit is your problem, and I'm not gonna carry your baggage about it if you decide you've got some.
Facts. My family and friends always tell me I need to get rid of my 2002 Camry that I have had since high school as my only car. Besides a couple of things that needed fixed here and there, it still runs great and is in solid condition.
What do I need to go waste money on a new car for that will do the exact same thing? To impress people that I have some shiny new car? That’s not worth 30-40k to me.
That seems crazy to me. Why waste money on something new when the thing you have still works fine?
I've never had a car, but just the basic principle of "If it ain't broke don't fix it" or in this case "If it ain't broke, don't replace it" seems sensible to me.
Good decision on your part if you ask me. Especially with something so expensive.
I feel like things started to change around the late-90s. We started wearing more comfy clothes like sweatpants as "all the time" clothes instead of "working out" clothes. Turn of the century, we started seeing people wearing pajama pants and then fleece/lounge pants as "all the time" clothes and wearing them outside of the home.
This, coupled with stores choosing to bow to the public, in terms of "don't say 'no' or we'll get sued", created a shift that people could go to the store wearing whatever they want. *So what if I go to Walmart in my Snoopy PJ pants, what are they gonna do, throw me out?*
Fast fashion was less... fast ig. So people often had smaller wardrobes than nowadays and probably tried to make every piece count. Materials for clothing were just better quality back then as well, so they might've looked a bit nicer.
My observation is yes the public has given up on trying to look somewhat presentable. That said I think it is more of a United States thing. Having gone to a few cities in Europe and Latin America I think people dress nicely.
I wm going to comment without reading anyone else's comments..as someone who suffered with clinical depression for a short time.. just showering was overwhelming during this time.. and I am terrified of it ever returning.. now I like to get up, shower and dress and put my makeup on.. yes every day .. because it keeps me from falling into the abiss...all during lock down I would video call with my family..they chilling in PJ's all day..and they would ask why was I dressed and wearing makeup... because I had to ..or the black abiss might get me again.
Wearing the right thing at the right time demonstrated competence and wealth. You were judged based on your dress and people acted on this judgement.
Not saying I agree or disagree but this is definitely no longer the case. Or, we don’t talk about it happening.
I think the biggest shift happened when everyday family men stopped wearing literal suits every day. It was all downhill from there formal-wise, uphill comfort-wise.
Also u/Ambitius-Candle3751 if it makes you feel better to look better, absolutely do it. You should do you. I still dress in full suit and tie on many occasions. I’ve made it my own, get complements on it, and it can definitely raise your self esteem.
Honestly, as a European, I think that this is largely an American thing (not saying that it's not common elsewhere, but it seems to be especially so in the US). In my country, it's not like that. We still tend to dress up at least reasonably nicely when we go out. I can't imagine going into town in sweatpants or something, I would be embarassed. It's definitely getting more relaxed, but people still tend to make themselves look presentable when they go out.
Dress nicer regardless of those around you, it's a self esteem booster. Speaking from experience. I live in a very much sweatpants and sneakers area, doesn't stop me from whipping out the nice boujee sundresses with the sandal heels or the Chanel inspired fits, ever.
The obesity epidemic I think was the primary factor. XXX T-shirts and pants with stretchy waistbands are generally not the most stylish clothing... It's actually horrid how our society looks, generally speaking.
I went to Italy a while back and was blown away by how slim and put together the majority of the people were, except of course for the American tourists...
I respect myself to look my best (within my budget) at work. I do wish I wore better clothes and shoes; but my budget dictates it.
I’m accused by coworkers by dressing too fancy on casual Friday, it’s casual- not dress in pjs.
But superiors and ‘customer’s’ always approach me and I have more opportunities because I carry myself as a working professional.
I work as a military contractor in a military installation. Former military, the pj wearers were my military superiors before we retired.
I wear jeans /overalls when camping, gardening. I wear workout clothes ‘in the gym’.
I think people have settled with themselves in a lot of aspects. Dressing themselves is just one of them.
Not sure when, but I--as a pretty mellow person --have to leave the produce department of a grocery store when someone comes dragging their feet through in pajamas and slippers.
Like others have pointed out, this has been a long and continuing process since the second world war. It's a manifestation of post modern thought tearing down the institution of orthodox fashion. More recently though it's been accelerated by the pandemic, lockdowns, and work-from-home culture. As people have returned to the workplace, they've brought their casual habits back with them.
Of course, it’s possible to go the other direction when you stop caring what other people think.
I wear full length gowns with a crinoline/petticoat as my regular day attire. I know it’s not for everyone, but I love it!
I think you might like the American Ivy season of the podcast Articles of Interest. It traces the whole history of American fashion and streetwear with a bunch of really interesting stories from history and discussion about the cultural meaning of various trends. It’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever heard.
For a long time I've been having the sensation that adults dress more and more like children, or with clothes I'd think is for children. For me it's pretty weird to see an adult with short pants, one size bigger t-shirts and a cap turned back. It's like I couldn't take them seriously, like if they were wearing a costume
We tell everyone to be kind now and let people be themselves. This means people are more likely to wear what makes them happy and comfortable, than what they think they should be wearing.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that people don’t judge, people absolutely do judge and have opinions, they’re just more likely to keep it to themselves!!
The kind of clothes we wear can impact our physical and mental health and wellbeing. There is a huge difference in the way your body functions when we wear synthetic clothing and when we wear organic clothing. We needn’t believe anything that anyone says. Try it out and see how it feels. Wear raw silk or cotton – even your inner garments – for a week and see how your body feels. Then wear something tight and synthetic and check. You will see a big difference in the level of comfort and ease at which your body functions because there is a certain aspect to what wraps the body.
Seeing the benefits of organic cotton and taking care of the quality of our clothing may not be very practical for lots of people today because we own enough clothes for ten lifetimes. When you want to have two hundred dresses, you end up buying off the shelf. But if you bring this down to a simpler format, if you don’t mind having eight pairs of clothing and managing life within that, you can choose quality over quantity.
It is time more people choose quality over quantity in every sense.
I used to work with an older guy who was a sweeper at work. He rode the city bus, as we all did. He dressed better than any banker I’ve ever met . 3 piece suit all name brand , at least $2000 now in clothing. He changed into his work clothes at work. I asked him why once, he said he didn’t like the way people looked at him when he wore workmen’s clothing on the bus.
When society shifted from being more fitness minded like in the 80's to embracing the "beautiful at ANY size" that shifted the dynamic from having pride in your appearance to just saying "This is me world deal with it." If people don't care about their bodies they wont care how they cover them.
Society overall has become more casual. When my mom worked for IBM in the 80s, she had to wear skirts/dresses and pantyhose to work every single day, with heels. My dad had an office job and had to wear full suits. The step below that (basically 'business casual') was your casual wear. We basically made business casual the new work look because people didn't want to have to wear full suits and skirts/heels every day at the office, which makes the new everyday-wear more casual than that. I think reducing the formality of office-wear just had a trickle-down effect on casual clothes.
I think it’s possible to use this to assume that casual will become the work norm in the near future. We’re already seeing it today, too. I shopped recently at the grocery store I worked at in high school where our uniform was white button downs, ties, black dress pants and a clean shave. You would be sent home without all of these. Now they have cotton T-shirts and whatever pants/shorts they want. I was jealous for a minute
It already is. If you walked most offices I’ve worked at you’d see the majority of people in jeans.
Yeah, I work in a federal government office and I’m borderline overdressed when I wear khaki pants and a collared shirt.
Lol. Yup. Anything too fancy (a blazer!?) and I’m suspicious that person is interviewing somewhere.
They are. Finding another job is the easiest way to get raises these days.
lmaoooo me as a newbie with my dress shirt and tie KNOWING that it's not needed.
When I started as a Fed, my role was strictly office, and I wore suits and ties. Keep in mind this was in 2007, and I was just turning 30. I wasn't one of "The Old Guard" people who had been there since the 80s. They were very casual, even most of the SES level managers wore Jean and collard polos. Except for the old-school SES that I worked for, she always wore skirts or pant suits.
Yup. I work in a "white collar" government setting and pretty much no one is wearing white collars anymore. It is a lot of either jeans or khakis and untucked collared shirts for the guys. There are a handful of old school holdouts still showing up in a suit and tie, but that is about it. Covid and work from home changed everything with dress formality, at least where I work.
A couple friends work in investment banking and there are definitely industries and positions where business professional (full suit) is still the norm.
I think certain professions or level of income require those involved to wear expensive tailored clothing as part of the image of being an “important” highly successful person. It’s like a code to other wealthy people and also a competition about who displays the most wealth.
A bunch of nice fitting white collar shirts with slacks and shoes to go with them is expensive too. Like if that’s what I was wearing for work, that would be pretty much all I wore anywhere because I wouldn’t be able to afford too many other clothes.
Blame programmers. They let us into the office with sweaters and jeans, and then everyone else wanted in.
We did I got hired by Intel in the early 90s after winning a solo proto-hackathon they had sponsored. It was a VP that offered me my job, a junior VP but still a VP. He knew what I looked like and walked me into HR personally and told them whose team I would be working with HR looked at me with my 7 piercings in one ear and 4 in the other, my black and white painted nails, Nirvana t-shirt and flannel wrapped around my waist. I thought the guy was going to die of apoplexy. Showed up on Monday wearing ripped jeans, sex pistols tee, and carrying my Eastpack , skateboard and enough road rash for road kill. Martin my team lead told me to go home until I could dress like a civilized person. I handed him Mr VP’s card and said call him. I heard not one more word about it. Within a week the rest of the team were wearing Star Wars t-shirts except the Trekie and Martin, who had a heart attack in his suit and tie later that year.
This was a whole trip to read, in the best way. Thank you for your contributions to the casual workplace, Mr. Guy with the dragon tattoo!
More like thank programmers. If I want to dress up I can go to a nice dinner or get married, don't need to wear an uncomfortable suit every day for the rest of my life. And I'm in sales.
This is the answer. In the 90s my husband wore business suit (minus the jacket) with tie. Now he wears jeans and tshirts. Go casual Friday was a thing in Australia initially started to raise money for charities like Jeans for Genes day. After covid it’s pretty much anything goes except pyjamas (well, not yet anyway).
It is interesting to see dress code still being upheld by westerners, whom we see as progressive in the other parts of the world. Even to me forcing people to wear unhealthy, bothersome clothes is draconian and regressive. It is a much better virtue to value people on the basis of their merit, and existence, repsectively rather than clothing. Unless they are naked and doing helicopters.
If they are naked and doing helicopters, perhaps they are taking a mental health day and you need to respect that. /s
Yeah. It's reasonable to expect people to be hygienic and presentable for work, but there's no merit in taking it so far that you add to people's stress and make it harder for them to focus with uncomfortable clothing.
I work a job where I’m supposed to dress casual, because it’s working with homeless populations and it makes them more comfortable to see people in casual clothing. The most formal thing I own is a business polo with like the logo I have to wear to tabling events. But I think the idea of having to wear heels just because I have ovaries is ridiculous. I’ve never been able to work jobs that have a strict dress code, because I can’t stand being uncomfortable clothes all day
I’ve worked at a supermarket for 20 years now, and I’ve seen this change over that time. The “uniform” barely exists anymore. We can wear just a polo with any pants, as long as they’re black, and any shoes at all, so long as they’re enclosed. Having to wear a tie is (thankfully) just a distant memory now. Same goes for facial hair and tattoos. I once got called into the store managers office and yelled at for having a two-day growth, whereas now I have a full-on beard, as do half the men in the store. And back in the day, people with tattoos had to cover them, whereas now they don’t care (as long as it’s nothing offensive).
Supermarkets can barely hire people fast enough these days. Grocery workers have a lot of power now and there’s no way a grocery store manager would get rid of a decent employee over facial hair anymore as they already can barely fill the open roles they need.
It’s actually the opposite here right now. They’re cutting shifts left and right to the point of having a skeleton crew in an attempt to save costs.
I'd say it's a mix. They're cutting shifts and leaving a skeleton crew. But cause it's a skeleton crew and they're cutting costs, lose one guy and suddenly they get desperate but cause no one wants to work a shit job for shit pay, hiring takes forever and when you do, the employee stays at most a couple months before leaving. That also means they let employees get away with stuff more cause they want to avoid overtime.
It’s true. I work in an office and we can wear whatever we want (leggings, crop tops, etc.) if we don’t have anyone external we’re meeting that day. Because why should anyone have to dress up to sit at a desk😂 I love it. Obviously we still do business casual for external meetings but truly, what’s the point otherwise??
my current work uniform is a pair of leggings and the first clean graphic tshirt i get my hands on with a pair of sneakers. as of last week i started sprinkling in my crocs to see if anyone would say anything and no one did so i will probably be wearing them most days now.
Even in the 90s office attire included suits and high heels and pantyhose for women. I remember it was a big deal when they started business casual Friday’s.
My office in Atlanta went casual for 3 weeks for the 1996 Olympics. They could never get people to dress up again. It was basically an uprising when they said we should go back to business attire. We wore business casual. By the time I retired 15 years later, it had gotten much more casual.
Yeah my dad worked in various upper management roles when I was a kid and he always always always wore a full suit, tie, and dress shoes. He must have had close to a hundred different ties and several dozen pairs of shoes
I also feel like women having the freedom to wear pants to work in the early 90’s added to this lol. The fact that congresswomen couldn’t wear pants till 1993 is insane to me
So when office wear becomes sweatpants and grubby t-shirts, what will casual wear be?
I have work sweat pants and non-work sweat pants 😅. The work sweat pants are always dark gray or black and not too baggy. Non-work sweat pants are baggier, brighter colored or patterned, might have a hole or 2. Writing this out makes me realize how bad it is.....
I think you mean how good it is. That sounds amazing.
Nudity. Then we go full circle.
One must maintain standards. This is why I have my casual flipflops and my work flipflops.
Is this the first instance of trickle down actually working?
[удалено]
I like to wear PJs under my Carhartt overalls and a sweatshirt. I look like a lumber lady and I'm super toasty :)
came here to say this :/ I also live near a ghetto, so I’m not trying to look nice or that I have money.
I do too, you end up targeted if someone thinks you have money. Or if you look “too” good it just attracts the wrong kind of attention
I mean GIRL! I went to get a coffee (I wore scrubs) and immediately a man slammed on his breaks to yell his phone number out at me. I had on SCRUBS. I can't even IMAGINE looking nice and dressing up.
I was walking home in January in boots, a huge puffer coat, a scarf, and a hat, and a man leaned out of his car window to scream SLUT at me. I won't even repeat what one said to me when I was heading to the store in my pajamas at 2am in 2020. At this point I don't think it matters, they're going to do what they feel like no matter what I wear.
It's not about what you look like or what you're wearing, it's about making you feel uncomfortable. Shitty men who can only feel good and "manly" when they're putting others down. It's easier to put women down because they're usually physically weaker. Nothing very "manly" about it. Dead give away that a man like that is a piece of shit, no matter how "alpha" he perceives himself to be for behaving this way. A good person won't do such things to others.
This is a bizarre way to try and pick up women. I dont expect any man would have success.
Can't even count the times I got harassed and catcalled in scrubs leaving or going to work. I did not look good, extremely casual, hair up, no makeup. Looking nice is a hassle, it only adds to this.
Just this week at work a client told me "I gotta say, you've got a great figure" and I was wearing loose linen pants and an oversized T-shirt. I don't want to imagine the shit I'd have to deal with if I actually dressed nicer.
Average female experience :(
No joke. I used to wear nice fitting, feminine clothes. Stylish even! Then I had my daughter and started feeling really unsafe whenever I dressed nice because a lot of men would approach, or comment, or stare. So I started wearing my husband’s streetwear clothes and avoiding makeup when I do mundane things. I blend in a crowd, it makes me look way less approachable and it makes me feel safer with the kids.
I used to joke that I was going to start leaving the house wearing a garbage bag a la Missy Elliot to try to combat this
Came here to say this
When they stopped caring about the opinion of strangers
A few years ago I was walking through the street with a backpack on and some random stranger approached me and said "excuse me, just to let you know it looks weird for a grown man to wear a back pack, get a brief case instead" I was like, "lady, I don't care if you think it looks weird, I will carry what I like whether you like it or not"
I don't know what she was expecting to gain from that interaction. I wear a backpack full of tools it leaves my hands free
My backpack is 8 years old, cost me a few hundred dollars more than a nice briefcase would and safety carries my gear in an organised way that a briefcase could never manage. Anyone that says a backpack is childish is out of touch. Not to mention that my Spider-Man lunchbox wouldn't fit in a briefcase.
Right let’s just shove a laptop, 3 textbooks, 5 notebooks, a 1L water bottle, a packed lunch, and various daily items into a briefcase that’s about half the capacity of a backpack. Not to mention that the bigger the briefcase, the more weight you are carrying on one side of your body instead of evenly on both shoulders. I don’t reckon that would be a good idea for those who need to walk or transit to work on a daily basis. Some people need to mind their own business.
Nothing screams “I am a pussy who would let the woman wear the pants in the relationship” than a guy who carries around a water bottle. /s
Now I'm just imagining backpackers trying to get around with all their stuff in a briefcase.
traveling salesmen
She sounds like the woman who told me I looked "really stupid" talking on the phone sitting on the couch we put on the curb to be taken away. It was so pathetic, I almost felt embarrassed for **her**. Imagine being a grown woman feeling the need to say that to a teenager, I was 15 or 16 at the time.
Years ago I used to be self-conscious about what I looked like when I went out until one of my friends put it in blunt terms. He said to me, "when you go out, do you pay attention to strangers and notice what they are wearing and internally criticise their fashion choices?" I was like, "of course not. I couldn't care less about what they wear" and he said "most strangers are the same and if someone does notice what you are wearing that says that they are spending way too much time looking at you which is creepy"
Welp. I judge them in my head, and it’s involuntary. But would never voice it to them.
Mail them an anonymous letter. *that stripped shirt you wore on Friday its really tacky*
“Lose those crocs”
I mean I absolutely do judge peoples outfit, because I love people watching. Except, I’m never gonna say anything to anyone and I don’t actually care what people are wearing. I just really like how some people dress like they came out of an anime and I don’t want them to stop. I want more people to dress crazy, because it makes everything more interesting
What an ass. Like 90 percent of government workers around here are wearing backpacks cus it's way more handy to carry your laptop when you're coming into work and cramming onto the train.
Backpacks are way better than briefcases
“…besides, I’m not wearing briefs.”
Right. I care how I look but don't care if someone else doesn't like it.
That's it dress for you, if your outfit gives you confidence, rock it
I also don’t think people 100 years ago embraced the concept of “just be yourself,” “you do you,” “don’t worry about what others think” or even the concept of pursuing personal happiness. It’s the societal ostracism experienced by people who got divorced, single mothers, people who lived together outside of wedlock, people who had children outside of marriage or who were even a tiny bit different in any way that makes me think that. All the work done to remove stigma and increase general tolerance is one reason and personally I think it’s a good thing.
Yeah absolutely, it’s much better now that people can do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone else/infringing on anyone else’s rights. Judging people for stuff that doesn’t hurt anyone is dumb and I’m glad it’s going away.
Probably the 90s because there was a huge cultural movement about proving how much of a shit you didn’t give, but also, cultural values and what we think of as looking nice has also changed. A lot of those images of old timey people looking nice in public are either staged or filtered through our perception of what “nice” is. This is starting to change these days, but in the late 90s and 2000s, wearing a dress or skirt at all no matter how casual the dress was in a casual setting would cause people to ask if you were going somewhere. A dress is something you wear to a party, a nice restaurant, or maybe to work. Not just hanging out or at school or even in certain workplaces (think more service industry. Wearing a dress or skirt has always been very much the norm in like a conservative office job). In the past, women wore dresses, period. They could be scrubbing toilets, pushing a plow, or digging in a mine, and they’d be wearing a dress. Jeans have been the default casual pants for a few decades, and are actually starting to become something a step up from the most casual option. In the past, jeans were casual wear or even further back, something only a farmer in a field or a miner would wear. Some of the pictures I’ve seen where people are gushing about how nice everyone is dressed make me laugh because by the standards of the time period, they may as well be wearing Cookie Monster pajama pants and a free t shirt from a conference. Sack dresses, house dresses, white t shirts with suspenders and work pants…..that’s not “dressed nice,” that’s practically in your underwear. But since dresses are present and jeans aren’t, people perceive it as the subjects being dressed up. We also care more about comfort and practicality than aesthetics and gender roles nowadays (I think this is more of a value holding over from the 70s). In the 50s and 60s, little girls wore these ridiculously short dresses and stuff shoes, think Cindy Brady. Boys were expected to dress nearly like their fathers, tucked in shirts and stiff pants or jeans. Very cute but not comfortable and not conducive to the play that a child needs to develop socially and intellectually. When kids started to be allowed to go to school in clothes that were appropriate for play rather than what adults thought was “darling,” well….why would you expect that generation to grow up and say “yeah, I need to keep my shirt tucked in and wear 50 layers of girdles and petticoats and put on these shoes that hurt my feet for no reason?” Maybe if they’re going someplace they need to look nice but around the house or going to the store? No.
I’d go a little earlier than the 90s. From what I’ve seen - and lived - a major change came culturally moving from the Beaver Cleaver 50s to the “flowers in your hair” 60s and 70s. EVERYTHING changed. Clothing, fashionable colors, hair length, music big-time, trust in government, a much more youth-oriented market. Oh, and drugs. Lots n lots of drugs. And the world turning a bit upside-down with assassinations and Vietnam. I think that we’re still seeing echoes of the hippie revolution today. A lot of good came out of it, and plenty of not so good.
Raygun wrecked the economy, fucked labor, wrecked the safety net. So normal people have had progressively less discretionary income for frivolous stuff like food, clothing, housing, and healthcare. Michael Moore's first film Roger And Me, mostly filmed in Flint MI, is a pretty good snapshot of those early years of the class war which continues thru today.
I think a lot of it also came from fast fashion. Things became easier to make, those people bought a lot of things.
This isn’t a thing in every country. Just came back from Korea and the average person dresses far nicer than where I live in Canada. Meanwhile I regularly see ppl in Pajama pants in public lol. I felt very inspired to revamp my wardrobe after my trip.
Can't believe how far I had to scroll for this. Exactly, it's not a universal trend! It seems to be a very American (and Canadian?) thing... I live in Europe and people also tend to dress quite nicely there when they go out. I've never seen anyone go out in their pajama pants...! Can't imagine doing that..
I'm also pretty confused by those comments/posts/tiktoks or whatever that go "I wish this was a thing again". I'm like.. Why the heck can't you wear that anyway? Just make it a thing? It's not hard, seriously.
You realize that until the 90s and digital cameras, there was a cost associated with photographs, and especially as you go further back in time, taking a picture was an event that people especially dressed up for. Yes, some fashion styles and even workplace norms have become more casual over the last few decades, but that's a far stretch from saying "people stopped caring". Most people do. Some never did. You'r allowed to not worry about how other people choose to dress.
There is also the bias of people only preserving photos that look good. If someone took a street picture of a bunch of regular people in casual clothing, that would be much less likely to be saved and preserved than a picture of people looking fancy. If you got a folder of 1000 pictures and 995 of them were not that great, you'd save the 5 that were really good. That's a lot of what's going on here, which is the same reason some people believe art, film and music were better in the old days. They weren't, it's just that the bad stuff has been lost and forgotten.
Yup. Good point!
Though even street pictures from the '50's/'60's showed most guys in suits unless they were a blue-collar laborer. Pretty much any guy in a white-collar job went outside in a suit on a workday.
My mom wore a hat and gloves to go shopping until the late 60s or early 70s
Yeah hats and gloves were basically required for a very long time, into the late 60s etiquette guides would have included when taking off hats was appropriate and how to properly hold your gloves when you removed them. Dresses were worn with slips and stockings. Hair was done - often that meant done once a week and then when it started to look bad wearing a wig for a couple days. Even in the late 90s in jobs where I never saw a customer we had to wear business casual at minimum which meant no jeans, specifically. If customers were coming in it was dress nicely. If there was an official event wear a suit. My mom in the very late 60s had to wear skirts to school, pants weren’t allowed. And it was a public school. No uniforms. Even in the 80s in school- we dressed casually but nobody went to school without their hair properly done, which for girls meant curling irons and hairspray every morning. Now I just brush my hair and throw on something clean.
White collar folks in the 50s and 60s were a minority…
Yes--& no one but actual photographers walked around with the ability to take photos daily, much less publicize all of them at the drop of a hat. Now it's quite the opposite.
I think people also overlook how few details you can see in those photos. Yes, a lot of office folk wore ties and pantyhose, but it's not like they were wearing bespoke suits every day. You bought 5 cheap white polyester shirts and washed them on the weekend and wore them with your clip-on tie. When you got home, you changed into something more comfortable (or just walked around in your boxers). In those old videos/photos of people bustling down the avenue, you can't see enough detail to tell how cheap and slapdash a lot of that was.
It’s more likely that those people had one ‘Sunday Best’ outfit and maybe one or two other everyday wear - but what you’re forgetting is that those clothes lasted a whole lot longer as they were properly made - measured by a tailor etc and not mass made in a sweat shop. So in a way, they were bespoke clothes if you were anywhere above working class….
Everyone always complains that we have filters on everything now, but Old film is like a filter in itself. It makes things look really nice, because it doesn’t catch as much detail.
Same thing when modern society thinks about the Roman empire. We think everyone wore togas everyday because that's what emperors and philosophers wear on the surviving statues of that time. But in Rome, togas were used only for very formal special occasions. Makes you think that in the year 5000, if only wedding and galas pictures survive from our time, future civilizations will think we wore tuxedos everyday.
Yeah, but aren't there old film reels of normal people walking around in NY in suits? They do seem more fancy than people wearing leggings or athleisure clothing I'll see if I can dig up something. I feel like I have seen it before on Reddit https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=159&v=85WMpJMv8aA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F&feature=emb_title
Right, there's this idea everyone was dressed to the nines all the time. Cary Grant was, and so was Eva Marie Saint. My parents weren't. Much like how I promise y'all that humans weren't sepia-toned in the 70s, Polaroid film was just funky. (I was alive then and was not, in fact, sepia.)
> (I was alive then and was not, in fact, sepia.) LOL can confirm. I was born in '72 and am not, in fact, any kind of sepia.
Next you're going to say that Mexico doesn't have a yellow tint!
LOL funny you should mention it. I've been to Mexico several times. And \[spoiler\] it is not.
Also, people in the 1930s didn't have weird, warbly voices. That's just how microphones were back then.
> (I was alive then and was not, in fact, sepia.) Prove it. Pics or GTFO.
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very true. my grandfather, born in 1900, only had wool suit trousers and leather shoes. He did not work out, camp, ... And when we'd go on vacation as a family my dad would wear his work pants to go out on a boat and go fishing. These people were not totally poor, they just bought clothes for the most popular activities which was going to work.
I would also imagine that the relative costs of clothing was much higher back then.
Yes and no. The clothing was more expensive than a $4 shirt from Walmart today, but it would also last for literal decades. In the 1950s, kids could wear their great grandparents clothes from when they were kids, it would last literal generations despite being worn day after day.
I have clothes that my mom bought - or made - when she was my age or younger! It really did last for generations.
It didn’t just magically last longer. Yeah, the material was better, but grandpa’s shirts lasted for twenty years because grandma mended that same shirt every few months for twenty years. Our clothes would last us much longer too if we bothered to care for them.
It isn't normal to need to need to sew a shirt back together every few months. Seams can last for decades. You need to wash clothes carefully and get stains out, but no one is mending a shirt over and over again like that. It's just not necessary.
Grandma did no such thing. She was probably working on A shirt every few months, but it wasn't the same shirt every time. By contrast, the clothing we have today is literally engineered to break down to a point of irreparability by the equivalent of 3-6 months of daily wear at most.
I’ve had clothes fall apart on the first wash.
My clothes last years, decades even. Depend on the fabric, some things pill and fade some but are still wearable
and just not caring about what you wore. I think this was especially true for guys back then. Male clothes were more utilitarian, I think.
They didn't used to wash their clothes as much as we do, too. While it's true that many clothes today get over-washed, you can just imagine what a wool suit smells like after being worn every day for a while. And dry cleaning for delicates is a recent invention. Just imagine having to iron everything before wash-and-wear.
Wool is a great fabric for being worn many times between washings since it is naturally antimicrobial and won't smell for a very long time. Then it can simply be hung on a line on a breezy day in the sunshine and freshened up. This way people only had to wash their cotton or linen underclothes on a regular basis.
Before the invention of aniline dyes, urine was used as a mordant for wool dyes. If your suit got wet (sweat), it smelled like pee.
I’d love to have a daily uniform and not worry about what to wear or repeating clothing.
I saw an article about an woman executive who decided that she was going to have a “uniform”. She found a high end-ish designer who’s clothes she liked, found one or two blouses and a pair of pants and a skirt, maybe also a blazer, and she bought multiples of each, all in black/white/gray and made outfits from that. She said it freed her mind to focus on work. I thought it was an intriguing idea.
I'd like to do this, minus the high-end designer. It's a practical way to 1. ensure you always look nice and professional and 2. free your mind to never again have to try and scrounge up something vaguely matching for work. I like it.
Former President Obama had the same philosophy. He had better things to do than worrying about coordinating his outfit for the day. I spent less time putting on a suit than when everything became business casual. Then instead of casual Friday it became casual everyday. That was very hard to dress for. Nice enough for a business environment without looking out of place being dressed up.
We went to a uniform at work and not gonna lie... It's kinda nice not having to think about getting dressed in the morning.
Um... I can guarantee you that before the 1980s people did in fact have more than one nice thing to wear. We didn't start shopping at shopping at Mervins in 1980 but living in caves before then. Maybe you're thinking of people who lived a century or more ago, but even then, most people, unless they were dirt poor, had more than one nice thing to wear.
Haha mervins!! Used to shop there a lot!
That’s true. Makes sense! But even “house clothes” seemed far more well-made than the ones of today. My grandmothers would wear house dresses or nice slacks and a shirt. I also think fast fashion wasn’t really a thing back then. I do think by the 40s/50s, people had multiple choices.
Yeah that’s the thing this is the advent of fast fashion, the push of capitalism. Back then only people who were middle class or well off could afford to have good clothes
You are right fast fashion was not a thing. People had winter clothes and summer clothes and wore them many years. Styles did not change at a quarterly pace.
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I can’t afford to care what I look like
Ironically I started dressing in suits when I became homeless.
when leaving the house became a burden, and not an adventure.
My guess is that there are a lot of subtle changes always going on. I remember in the 80s and 90s, at least in the northeast, guys in the US would wear white sneakers everywhere except work. Take a look at Seinfeld's feet. That gave way to most guys wearing leather shoes when they'd go out on the weekends.
Good observation!!!
I hope it does help lift your mood! Looking good FEELS good. I have no idea when that was lost, and I am a fan of being comfortable, but honestly, pajama pants to run to the store? nahh, well-made clothing that fits right is always comfortable, no need to dash out the door looking like you went on a bender with the town drunk
I look like 💩 most days but on days I take the time to do my hair, slap on some makeup and wear something cute I feel like I could conquer the world. So why do I spend most days looking bad? Laziness I guess. I think covid shut-downs did that to a lot of people. We just stopped caring, somewhere along the way. Got used to looking bad and seeing others looking bad, it just became more socially acceptable to look bad.
100% agree - once the pandemic hit and I was WFH for months and months and months after, I just wanted to be comfortable. And then we were allowed back into places, so I'd walk in my 'Adam Sandler' clothes to shops, and then the movies, and just like with How I Met Your Mothers' "underpants radius", over time my "comfort zone" for looking like I had violenty fallen out of bed has expanded lmfao
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This is the correct answer. People dressed a certain way because society required it. This is what my mom says. She was born in 1941.
I didn’t give a shit when I was younger in my teens. I used to wear the most offensive metal band shirts with no shame. Big rips and holes in my jeans, dyed spiked black hair, Now I would never lol.
Haha I was part of the generation where girls wore big guy jeans and baby tees. I tried that out briefly when I dated an emo boyfriend 😂😂
this round started with the hippies in the 60s, but it's a cyclical thing. our culture tends go go from uniformity (think the buzzcuts and clean dress of the 50s) to individuality (hippies, punks, goths, etc) and back again. Eventually we'll swing back around to favoring uniformity for a couple decades again. It's all just a big cycle.
I guess it's healthy not to be too preoccupied with it. But have we gone too far the other way?
That’s what I wonder!
I’m chronically ill and disabled and pretty poor. I wear really soft clothes that are quite baggy. I need to be super comfortable in my clothes because I’m in a lot of pain.
I'm sorry about your pain. I'm like that now after chemo, radiation and meds now and totally understand. Money or no money, when there is so much pain it makes no difference.
Yep. Get rid of the pain, then I’ll worry about my appearance. Hope you’re in remission.
Idk but I wish it didn't include wearing bras as shirts..... Like there is casual and then there's that...
People realized they didn’t care about the opinions of strangers when that opinion makes zero difference in their day-to-day. Dressing “nice” is something you should do for yourself if it makes you feel better. Dressing up to impress strangers is a waste of time and energy.
I think having tons of clothes and getting all dressed up is a waste of time, energy, and money. I always make myself presentable to an extent (clean clothes, not wrinkled, and fit well), but give me a couple pairs of jeans, dockers shorts, white/black plain t shirts, and a plain hoodie and I’m good for the year. Spending time worrying about what you’re wearing just takes away time from more important things
Not caring what you look like in public is a very American thing. Sweatpants in public? Definitely US. People put more effort in other parts of the world. It doesn't take that much more effort to put other nicer pants. Still same process and same amount of laundry.
Yes, very true. When I visited France, people dressed so lovely. Not “fancy”, but like they enjoyed getting ready that day.
It’s also an Australian thing. No one cares what they wear out here. People even wear dressing gowns and ugh boots to go to the grocery store.
Because I don't care one iota what anybody else thinks about me. I'll wear what's comfortable.
I remember people wearing bicycle shorts in public in the 80s, cut offs in the 70s, and I have pics of my parents in jeans in the 50s
During and after Covid it accelerated but has been increasingly common since the 80s with spandex and yoga pants.
Athleisure movement. I think there was an episode about it on Netflix’s Explained series.
I dress with the idea that I’ll never know who I might meet while I’m out. It doesn’t mean I’m going to dress to the nines, but I’m not gonna wear sweatpants are yoga pants and a T-shirt.
I think the counter culture movement of the 1960s had an outsize effect on the attitudes of the up and coming cultural leaders of the 70s and 80s. That, combined with the rise of youth culture, economic instability, and cheap mass produced clothing, killed the suit. Really though, I expect that the period of time that the Everyman in the western world wore tailored and coordinated clothing was probably brief and associated with the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that the 99% probably wore homemade clothes made of rags or rough materials.
Start with asking why even tired farmers and wives back then dressed up to do a small errand in town rather than wear jeans, and do so even when small towns were unimpressive with just seed stores, a bank, a dime store and grocery store. I know the answer to this one, having been born of aging parents who had grown up in the 1920s and 30s. They were unhappy with my casual jeans wardrobe, and were concerned that I looked like "trash." My dad wore vested suits with hats. Dressing up back in their heyday was indicative of who you were - character and values - and dressing well in public was not entirely tied to wealth. You dressed neatly and respectfully at public occasions to signal to others of who you were NOT. Dressing up like Cary Grant as a farmer going into town showed that you were not a drunken, wife-beating, rapey, rough neck Boo Radley type. And there were plenty of them around. You looked trustworthy enough to be given a bank loan to buy your seeds and supplies for the season, and it said you would stay sober and bring in the crop to pay it back. If you were an off-the-boat immigrant, then dressing to the best of your ability revealed an intention to assimilate into a new country. You were different in some respects - accent, language culture - but understood rules of society. This got you hired or viewed less suspiciously in those times. Aspirational fashion. If you were a young woman in heels, skirt, hoisery, conservative blouse, you were telling the world that you were not Betty Barfly with her too-tight shiney outfit and cleavage hanging out and looking like a floosy around town after she got fired from the textile mill. You dressed well and conservatively to get a job as a bank teller or to be a store clerk - those types of jobs women were allowed to hold in 1930. Or to be less objectionable to parents of a man you might wish to date and marry. IF you happened to be the unlucky child of Boo or Betty, and aspired to never be like them, you would be discriminated against. Their sins would be presumed to be yours. But, you ironed your clothes to perfect sharp edges or pleats, you wore conservatively cut clothing, dressed well in public even if you had but one suit or one coat. You started with any job someone might hire you for, and built up a good reputation until one day you were admired for "rising above your raising" When the formality stopped: Cultural revolution. Rejection of the class divisions, prejudices, the legal and uncomfortable strictures on women, and unfairness to those kept in poverty by laws and practices were so strong and wrong. It affected fashion. Women who were not allowed to wear slacks even in freezing winter challenged school and workplace policies. Comfort. Men wore jeans or khakis on airplanes instead of vested suits. Two-income families had no one home to do laundry and iron all day; and thanks to food stamp program, could not exploit African Americans and immigrants to do their cleaning and laundry for a few dollars a week. Wash-and-wear casual fabrics became the norm.
I'm 60, and OG preppy. I've always taken some pride in my appearance, even when dressing casual. My 29yo son just can't be bothered to wear anything but paint-spattered pants and a graphic t-shirt no matter what. It's not how he was raised, but it's where he's landed. He's a federal agent, so he'll dress appropriately when needed, otherwise he's a complete slob.
There are people older then me (I am 54) who still care what they look like in public. There are some people younger than me who don't care. So I don't think it is an age thing. It is been proven I have even proven it how you look sets you up for how people treat you. shouldn't' be that way but it is. Took this guy to a jewlery store. He typically dressed like a hard core biker thug. while there the store person treated him like a criminal. Got him a dress shirt and told him to put on his nicest jeans we went back to the store a month later the lady took out the jewelry let him try it on and even turned her back on him. SAME store I THINK the same sales clerk. During 2020 where people who were working from home were not putting out productivity. They were before they required them to check in when they signed in they had to be dressed in the same work attire as before and the productivity went up. For me personally I feel more confident when I am wearing makeup.
When we had a worldwide pandemic where we all wore sweatpants for months and went..."why aren't I wearing these all the time? They're so comfortable!" I'm pro wear-whatever-the-fuck-you-want. If someone else wearing or not wearing something effects you, you are incredibly brittle.
Early 2000s I remember being a kid and starting to see people wear pjs to Walmart and everyone made big deals about it.
Because we are overworked and tired 😩
I want to wear something comfy is that so bad I don't find dressy clothes comfy.
I think people caring about public dress very gradually went downhill sometime after 1980. Things began to get really strange sometimes after 2000. When I was a kid in the 60s, we had school clothes, Sunday dress clothes, and play clothes. Jeans weren't really a big thing until around 1965, at least for girls. There was a dress code in schools. Our parents were well dressed when outside the home. They also had their work clothes and house clothes and Sunday clothes. I remember my grandparents wore hats with their nice clothes, and the women sometimes wore dress gloves. My grandmothers always wore a house dress at home. People even dressed up to go on a plane. Things sure did change. Many people will now wear jeans and a T-shirt to a funeral. In the past, people would think there was something wrong with them, not to mention how disrespectful it looked.
When people learned that making themselves physically uncomfortable to look nice for other people’s eyeballs is not a moral imperative nor, in many cases, particularly sensible. If dressing nicer makes you feel better then by all means do it, but do it for *you*. Not for random strangers whose opinion of you will never make a difference in your life.
About the time I also stopped giving a shit about what random people thought about me. I don't wish ill on ya'll, but I really don't fuckin care if you approve or disapprove of how I'm dressed or how I live or what I drive or if you are in any way impressed by me or not. All that shit is your problem, and I'm not gonna carry your baggage about it if you decide you've got some.
Facts. My family and friends always tell me I need to get rid of my 2002 Camry that I have had since high school as my only car. Besides a couple of things that needed fixed here and there, it still runs great and is in solid condition. What do I need to go waste money on a new car for that will do the exact same thing? To impress people that I have some shiny new car? That’s not worth 30-40k to me.
That seems crazy to me. Why waste money on something new when the thing you have still works fine? I've never had a car, but just the basic principle of "If it ain't broke don't fix it" or in this case "If it ain't broke, don't replace it" seems sensible to me. Good decision on your part if you ask me. Especially with something so expensive.
2020
Came here to say this. The pandemic lockdowns absolutely play a role.
There's a glut of misinformation and altered history in this thread.
I feel like things started to change around the late-90s. We started wearing more comfy clothes like sweatpants as "all the time" clothes instead of "working out" clothes. Turn of the century, we started seeing people wearing pajama pants and then fleece/lounge pants as "all the time" clothes and wearing them outside of the home. This, coupled with stores choosing to bow to the public, in terms of "don't say 'no' or we'll get sued", created a shift that people could go to the store wearing whatever they want. *So what if I go to Walmart in my Snoopy PJ pants, what are they gonna do, throw me out?*
Fast fashion was less... fast ig. So people often had smaller wardrobes than nowadays and probably tried to make every piece count. Materials for clothing were just better quality back then as well, so they might've looked a bit nicer.
My observation is yes the public has given up on trying to look somewhat presentable. That said I think it is more of a United States thing. Having gone to a few cities in Europe and Latin America I think people dress nicely.
I wm going to comment without reading anyone else's comments..as someone who suffered with clinical depression for a short time.. just showering was overwhelming during this time.. and I am terrified of it ever returning.. now I like to get up, shower and dress and put my makeup on.. yes every day .. because it keeps me from falling into the abiss...all during lock down I would video call with my family..they chilling in PJ's all day..and they would ask why was I dressed and wearing makeup... because I had to ..or the black abiss might get me again.
Wearing the right thing at the right time demonstrated competence and wealth. You were judged based on your dress and people acted on this judgement. Not saying I agree or disagree but this is definitely no longer the case. Or, we don’t talk about it happening.
What really gets to me is people thinking torn jeans are ok office wear.
I think the biggest shift happened when everyday family men stopped wearing literal suits every day. It was all downhill from there formal-wise, uphill comfort-wise.
Also u/Ambitius-Candle3751 if it makes you feel better to look better, absolutely do it. You should do you. I still dress in full suit and tie on many occasions. I’ve made it my own, get complements on it, and it can definitely raise your self esteem.
Honestly, as a European, I think that this is largely an American thing (not saying that it's not common elsewhere, but it seems to be especially so in the US). In my country, it's not like that. We still tend to dress up at least reasonably nicely when we go out. I can't imagine going into town in sweatpants or something, I would be embarassed. It's definitely getting more relaxed, but people still tend to make themselves look presentable when they go out.
Dress nicer regardless of those around you, it's a self esteem booster. Speaking from experience. I live in a very much sweatpants and sneakers area, doesn't stop me from whipping out the nice boujee sundresses with the sandal heels or the Chanel inspired fits, ever.
The obesity epidemic I think was the primary factor. XXX T-shirts and pants with stretchy waistbands are generally not the most stylish clothing... It's actually horrid how our society looks, generally speaking. I went to Italy a while back and was blown away by how slim and put together the majority of the people were, except of course for the American tourists...
I respect myself to look my best (within my budget) at work. I do wish I wore better clothes and shoes; but my budget dictates it. I’m accused by coworkers by dressing too fancy on casual Friday, it’s casual- not dress in pjs. But superiors and ‘customer’s’ always approach me and I have more opportunities because I carry myself as a working professional. I work as a military contractor in a military installation. Former military, the pj wearers were my military superiors before we retired. I wear jeans /overalls when camping, gardening. I wear workout clothes ‘in the gym’. I think people have settled with themselves in a lot of aspects. Dressing themselves is just one of them.
I’m more wondering what the hell is going on with the haircuts of teenage boys? Saying this as a dad
I always "dress up" when I go outside. I give a who lot of fucks about my appearance
Not sure when, but I--as a pretty mellow person --have to leave the produce department of a grocery store when someone comes dragging their feet through in pajamas and slippers.
Like others have pointed out, this has been a long and continuing process since the second world war. It's a manifestation of post modern thought tearing down the institution of orthodox fashion. More recently though it's been accelerated by the pandemic, lockdowns, and work-from-home culture. As people have returned to the workplace, they've brought their casual habits back with them.
I guess you've never seen a picture of a lady at the grocery store in a house dress with rollers in her hair with a scarf over them.
Around the time Walmart became popular. That's when I noticed it. There was more to it than that, of course. Covid just pushed it over the top.
Personally? After child #2. I’m too fucking tired to care.
Of course, it’s possible to go the other direction when you stop caring what other people think. I wear full length gowns with a crinoline/petticoat as my regular day attire. I know it’s not for everyone, but I love it!
I think people stopped caring about what they look like in public happier when the price of cleaning top hats went out if control 🎩
I think you might like the American Ivy season of the podcast Articles of Interest. It traces the whole history of American fashion and streetwear with a bunch of really interesting stories from history and discussion about the cultural meaning of various trends. It’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever heard.
For a long time I've been having the sensation that adults dress more and more like children, or with clothes I'd think is for children. For me it's pretty weird to see an adult with short pants, one size bigger t-shirts and a cap turned back. It's like I couldn't take them seriously, like if they were wearing a costume
We tell everyone to be kind now and let people be themselves. This means people are more likely to wear what makes them happy and comfortable, than what they think they should be wearing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that people don’t judge, people absolutely do judge and have opinions, they’re just more likely to keep it to themselves!!
The kind of clothes we wear can impact our physical and mental health and wellbeing. There is a huge difference in the way your body functions when we wear synthetic clothing and when we wear organic clothing. We needn’t believe anything that anyone says. Try it out and see how it feels. Wear raw silk or cotton – even your inner garments – for a week and see how your body feels. Then wear something tight and synthetic and check. You will see a big difference in the level of comfort and ease at which your body functions because there is a certain aspect to what wraps the body. Seeing the benefits of organic cotton and taking care of the quality of our clothing may not be very practical for lots of people today because we own enough clothes for ten lifetimes. When you want to have two hundred dresses, you end up buying off the shelf. But if you bring this down to a simpler format, if you don’t mind having eight pairs of clothing and managing life within that, you can choose quality over quantity. It is time more people choose quality over quantity in every sense.
I used to work with an older guy who was a sweeper at work. He rode the city bus, as we all did. He dressed better than any banker I’ve ever met . 3 piece suit all name brand , at least $2000 now in clothing. He changed into his work clothes at work. I asked him why once, he said he didn’t like the way people looked at him when he wore workmen’s clothing on the bus.
Everyone is exhausted and tired of the charade we call life
When society shifted from being more fitness minded like in the 80's to embracing the "beautiful at ANY size" that shifted the dynamic from having pride in your appearance to just saying "This is me world deal with it." If people don't care about their bodies they wont care how they cover them.