Aye! So true. The most sincere and treasured compliment I have ever received was from an older mentor of mine – who said that he appreciated and valued how I dressed up, instead of down, for serious occasions. I help lead a church group – I’m normally found in black opaque tights, black pumps, a black skirt and tucked in blue polo shirt and a nice sweater . . . instead of converse covered in ballpoint pen writing, a pair of torn jeans and a untucked, wrinkled blue polo shirt. What causes this slippery slope, one wonders, and why has formal superfantastic (or far from it, but at least it is still formal) dress only worn on the red carpet now?

Ah, the Deja has lamented long and loudly on this one. I thought it was an LA phenomenon; apparently it’s not just confined to our little Kasual Korner.

http://unefemmeduncertainage.blogspot.com/2007/08/casualties.html

I *so* agree. I recently made a trip to my hometown of Seattle and had dinner at the best (and most expensive) restaurant on the waterfront. I had assumed the patrons would be dressed nicely, so I wore a simple but chic Marc Jacobs dress and Stuart Weitzman heels. But when I sauntered in with my fabulous outfit, I realized that NO ONE else had even bothered to look nice. There was even a man wearing a ripped jeans with a baseball cap. I was appalled.

I know Seattle is supposedly the land of fleece and REI, but *come on*.

Silicon Valley isn’t much better either. I went to the Google Holiday Party last year and while some were dressed in tuxes and full-length gowns, there were people there just wearing jeans. Just goes to show you that money can’t buy you style or common sense.

Yes! I love dressing up, but the opportunities to do so are very few now. If I get an invitation to something that says “semi-formal dress,” I can assume that many of the people will show up in khakis and jeans. I don’t like feeling overdressed, so my formal clothes see very little wear. We need to bring back elegant dining.

So true…so true. My girlfriend and I go to the Shakespeare Theater (in Washington DC) at least once each year, with a nice dinner beforehand, and we’re both appalled at the lack of dress at the theater and at dinner. Yes, even crocs, at the Source Theater (at least they were black).

Sir, I remember when an airplane flight was a big deal, and my parents taking my brother and I to Robert Hall for little 2-piece suits with clip-on ties, for a simple flight from Hawaii to the mainland…

I so LOVE dressing up that I’m inevitably the most dressed up person at the company holiday party (gotta wear all those cocktail dresses somewhere, right?). And every time our company buys a table at some charity’s black tie dinner, I always let the boss know that I’m available to be a “table filler” if they need it! Then, once I get there, I am continually shocked by the people who attend black tie events in regular suits (or worse) instead of tuxes or in cocktail dresses rather than full length evening gowns. Who are these sad, sad people who don’t like to get dressed up???

(And yeah, I like to dress up to fly, too!)

Oh dangster – it gets even worse. Opening night at the Seattle Opera – mind, this is the opening night for the season and a Saturday night, too. In the expensive seats, the dress circle. People were in evening dresses, black tie…

And then there was the hairy-legged guy in shorts.

Discussing this piece with a friend yesterday, she reminded me that at her brother’s wedding a few years ago, on a July day, one guest arrived at the reception in shorts.

As for the class question, I would emphasise that even the poorest families in the past had what was called their Sunday best. If you can afford to go to a nice restaurant, you can surely afford one shirt and tie or one nice dress, which does not have to be expensive, just dressy. And if you have the money to go out every night of the week, you can probably afford the dry cleaning bills.

When Hub and I go out for dinner (once every two months, if that) he always wants to wear a jacket, at minimum, and often a tie, and certainly always dress pants. I like to dress up also, and now finally in our adult stages we have collected enough pieces to do so. When I go to the opera (once per year) I put on the best outfit, always. The arguments against dressing up are along the lines of, “You’re just sitting there for two hours, what’s the point?” or, “If I’m eating, I need to be comfortable.” These are ridiculous attempts at justifying bad choice.

We recently lived in a city where dressing up was frowned upon, as though you were trying to “show people up”. I get the idea of the class distinction, but there are always affordable nice clothes around: Target in the US, Winners in Canada, hell, I have found some beautiful (and dead cheap) pieces at Value Village!

Sorry for ranting on, but this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

We can lead by example.

Just a personal note on the notion that this discussion, at its core, is based on class distinction. My mother was a child during the Depression and a young woman during World War II. We have hundreds of family photos from that time. Believe me when I say these people were blue-collar and far from rich — au contraire. But everyone in these photos (which were not taken on special occasions, like weddings; they’re just everyday candids) is always dressed nicely. Everyone, always. And sometimes I wish it was still that way. Oh well. I’d blather on more but I need to get back to work.

My dad worked for a cruise line and so my family vacations were on cruises. And we had to learn early on the proper utensils to use, and how to sit at the table. They also had 1 to 2 formal nights during the cruise and dressing up was my favorite part. When I was older and got to go on a longer cruise there were 4. You don’t get many opportunities to dress up these days. I also remember as a senior in high school I decided to take my first boyfriend to the ballet. And I told him how important it was to me to dress up. Luckily we had gone to a wedding a few months earlier so I had helped him to pick out a suit – shoes, suit, shirt, tie, suspenders. Hot!

Nowadays it is drepressing – you don’t see people caring to dress up for anything. Heck, when I wear heels to work they think I am “dressing up” but you know what? I’m still dressing up if I want to! Plus, I like to dress up when I go out to dinner with my husband. I love him and I want to look pretty when I go out with him. That’s my favorite special occassion and he’s worth it.

Luv
Poochie
shoedaydreams.blogspot.com

Mr. Tizzy and I wanted to go out for a nice dinner and get dressed up for our anniversary. We couldn’t afford a fancy resturaunt (where people wear jeans anyway) so we went to a regular resturaunt and got dressed up anyway. He wore a tie and I wore a cocktail dress and we had a marvelous time.

As far as cost goes… the cocktail dress I wore cost me 9.99 on the clearance rack and I wore shoes from Payless. My whole outfit cost less than $30. You don’t need cash… just class.

JK, Tizzy and CHarlotte Allen have great points about cost not being a factor in dressing your best.
I don’t have much of a budget for clothing, but somehow I have always made looking my best a priority. It just makes me feel good. I was always taught that being overdressed is much better than being underdressed (I was raised in the South, maybe that was part of it? American Southerns are very preoccupied with how things look.) I end up being overdressd lots of times – work, theatre, restaurants, parties, even at weddings…but I always get lots of compliments. I think a lot of people equate dressing up with dressing too ostensibly and would prefer to go ‘under the radar’ in their comfort zone. Little do they realize that dressing like you are homeless is going to get you attention, just negative attention. So why not look classy and get positive attention?

i have always dressed to please myself — and i’d rather be considered over-dressed for an occasion (except, perhaps, swimming) than feel like i haven’t even made an effort.

I backpacked through South America after living in Chile for two years. It was embarrassing for me to see how some other American tourists dressed — torn jeans, dirty t-shirts, nasty shoes, uncut, unwashed hair. The South Americans, for the most part, were well-groomed and dressed as nicely as they could. They took far more pride in their appearance (I am talking about all income levels) than many of the Americans I saw.

I worked in Chile for two years with a group of indigenous women. Many were illiterate, all were poor — yet when they came into town, they wore their very old but clean “good” clothes. And I never smelled any BO (unlike in Paris), which leads me to believe that they bathed daily, even though they didn’t have running water at home.

Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to be dirty, sloppy or inappropriate.

I dress up for school, church, concerts–almost any occasion that’s more elevated than running errands. I almost never wear jeans. I often get compliments from people of a certain age, but from my own generation I mostly get questions about why I am so dressed up. I have a feeling that some people think I’m “trying too hard,” but honestly, it doesn’t require much more effort to put on dress slacks instead of jeans, a sweater instead of a sweatshirt, pretty flats instead of Uggs, run a brush through your hair and put on some lip gloss. It just requires a little thinking ahead.

Ditto on lack of money not indicating inability to purchase formal wear. I have a fully lined satin gown that is well-made and gorgeous, purchased from a second-hand store for $30 with its original tags still on it, and a little black wool dress with a matching lined coat that were $25 and look stunning with the red silk scarf I got for Christmas a few years ago.

I am so glad I am not the only one who dresses up! I wear heels and dress pants everyday to school and work. I dress up even more for church on Sunday and sit next to all the jeans and flip flops around me. Do my feet fet tired walking all over campus? You betcha they do! But the compliments I get from teachers are well worth it. First impressions can last last a lifetime and I would never want to have someone think I am sloppy or they are not important enough for me to make an effort.

Even in graduate school, when I lived on pennies per day, I never wore sweatpants and sneakers around town. All you have to do is find a Goodwill near a nice neighborhood – those doctors near Duke University donated a lot of Armani and Jones New York, and I wasn’t ashamed to wear it! I also managed to wangle a Dillard’s credit card, and that store kept me looking good. I wore a leopard-print blazer, long black silk skirt, and sky-high black heels to my dissertation defense. A bit over-the-top, I agree, but I figured that even if I hadn’t a dime in the bank, I’d have a better shot at making some money if I looked the part!

Whenever I see movies or even photos from the 40’s or 50’s I find it almost shocking how good people looked. Of course movie stars looked great but even average Joes looked very well put together based on the photographic evidence. Now, not so much. This may be yet one more legacy of the 60’s, something that started out well (you know, a corrective measure to get rid of some stuffiness and snobbiness) that has turned into something rather lamentable. In my rather upscale NYC neighborhood you see lots of people, especially aging baby boomers, dressed a step above homeless people. Men and women who haven’t had a good haircut in 30 years and who can’t seem to get out of their jeans or sweat pants for any reason. The women, of course, when they do dress up seem to favor loose, shapeless vaguely “ethnic” garments that look like sacks worn with what look like orthopedic sandals but are probably Birkenstocks. The horror!

And as others have noted, this is not about money. You can find some really fabulous dresses at Target for $30 or $40, far less than you’d pay for a pair of designer jeans or name-brand sneakers. This whole dressing-down phenomenon is actually a reverse form of snobbism, as those on the lower end of the economic scale have tended to still dress nicely when the occasion calls for it even though that may be changing. Head to any black church in the worst, poorest neighborhood and you’ll find many people dressed quite fabulously, hats and all.

The one place in NYC where people still dress is for events at Lincoln Center. While you do see some jeans and khakis for the most part people really deck themselves out – you’ll see fabulous couture dresses and shoes and some evening gowns. And when the Russians (the Kirov, the Bolshoi, etc.) are in town people seem to take it up a notch. Not everyone is in couture, of course, but most are dressed very appropriately even if it’s just a simple skirt and top. Best of all are performances of “The Nutcracker” where all the little girls are dressed in gorgeous velvet party frocks and their moms are just as elegantly dressed. I wish we saw more of this and didn’t have to save it for the opera or ballet.

I live in a very, very casual city here in Florida and it kills me that there doesn’t seem to be a single place off-limits to Crocs, flip flops, and cut-off shorts. I’ve seen people show up to college classes in pajamas!

I want ONE place where I can go and feel the glam surround me. As it is, I’m almost always “over-dressed” compared to those around me, but heck if I let that stop me. I don’t mind standing out, but I still wish some more people would stand with me.

I don’t even think of it as dressing up. You show respect or the lack of it in how you put yourself together, whether it be jeans or satin, or both together if you are into that. If you want me to think you are a careless person with a careless brain and the taste of a garden slug, then throw on whatever is lying on your bedroom floor. But don’t expect me to care who you are or how you wandered into my sight.

After all, I think people get dressed to tell the world who they are. Otherwise, why bother at all? You were born naked and you will not get a reaction from me if you walk around naked. Cold? Wrap up in a blanket. You can wear the boxes my shoes come in on your feet, go ahead, I’m offering them.

I go to a university in the Bay Area. My first year of college I would get up every morning and do my hair, wash my face, and put on a little bit of mascara. I was constantly asked who I was trying to impress, as my roommates left for class in their pajamas,occasionally switching to jeans. I told them I was not trying to impress anyone, I just enjoy taking care of myself.
In Los Angeles it is not out of the norm for a person in my age bracket to get up and get ready for school. In the Bay Area people are more casual in their appearence. Which is great for them, but I prefer to spend the extra 10 minutes getting ready.

I just got back from school.

It started out wonderfully as my aunt and I walked in resplendent in our Sunday best. She asked the principal (another member of our church) if she could come along with me for the day, probably using some “first lady” influence.

My pink church suit was absolutely exquisite. As we walked down the halls the gasps and sighs were audible. Despite a warning (or threat?) from one girl that it would be truly unfortunate if anything happened to such lovely ensembles we sailed through my morning classes.

Rather than risk an “accident” in the cafeteria we went outside to the quad to have lunch. Unexpectedly, today we had early (2 pm) dismissal. I had gotten through the school day without incident (or accident) but my aunt’s driver was on an errand and could not pick us up until 3 pm. So we decided to walk home, about a half a mile or 10-15 minutes (our lovely suits are not designed for moving quickly).

Still being careful we took an alternate route home through a nature trail that ends at the rear of her house. There is simply nothing like walking through the forest in one’s best Sunday suit and hat. Our suits looked even more gorgeous against the forest background and sun rays beaming through the trees.

But then the trail was interupted by a muddy marsh. The only way to cross it was over a rotting log that could collapse. Our stilletto heels did not make things any easier. I have to admit that I found the risk and the thrill arousing and my heart was beating wildly at the prospect of stumbling and ruining our beautiful new outfits.

While I could manage as my skirt was only mid-calf my aunt had to hike up her full-length skirt to avoid having it soiled. She almost lost her balance and toppled in but I grabbed her hand and kept her from falling. She unlocked the gate to her backyard and we were home our beautiful suits completely intact although we were emotionally drained.

We were going to stop to rest by her swimming pool when I tripped over a loose deck tile and proceeded to topple into the deep end. It was so shocking. Even though I can swim and I was not about to drown my beautiful pink suit was completely ruined! My hair matted over my face. My lovely hat now floating sodden to the shallow end. I was about to sob uncontrollably when my aunt, in her fabulous full length white Champagne suit jumped in to join me, laughing as she did.

“Don’t worry”, she said. “I can always get you another one”.