![Picture](/uploads/3/2/2/3/32237703/published/9c78c77ef9c467f4d4173e300a894e90-cinema-movies-lauren-bacall_1.jpg?250)
One evening in early April I was waiting for two of my granddaughters to finish their indoor soccer practice when an adolescent girl their age approached me and said, “Your coat looks really nice.”
It was a wet, chilly evening, and I was wearing a London Fog given me thirty years ago by an elderly widow whose deceased husband no longer had to fret about the rain or the cold.
Though I thanked the girl, her comment took me aback. Then I looked at the other adults milling around me, and thought, as I often think nowadays, that all of them were dressed like…well, like slobs. Several were wearing sweat pants and hoodies, others ragged jeans and rumpled sweaters. One woman, a thirty-something mom, wore designer jeans torn artfully at the knees.
Several people have from time to time complimented me on my attire. One man, age fifty or so, once told me that I dressed like an adult, a remark that struck me then and strikes me now as ludicrous. I typically wear a pair of khaki pants, casual shoes, and a shirt with a button-down collar. For a long time, unless I am making my way to the Y or an exercise field, I have felt uncomfortable wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt in public. But to be complimented on such mundane clothing is not only silly, it also reveals how low our standards have fallen.
Go to any public arena—a sports event, a shopping mall, Wal-Mart, you name it—and you realize that the standard of dress for men and women, adults and children, has reached a low point in American history. Blue jeans are de rigueur; t-shirts with slogans, some of them billboards of obscenity, assault the eyes; pajama bottoms are worn to the grocery store; restaurant patrons appear at lunch looking as if they had just rolled out of bed; grown men wear baseball caps while eating steaks at Outback.
Let’s contrast our contemporary “style” with some bits from the past. Go online, Google “baseball games 1930s photos,” and look at the pictures of the fans. Most are males wearing ties and coats. The women are wearing dresses and hats. Take a look at television shows from the 1950s or at “Mad Men,” and note how stylish people used to dress both at work and in the home.
When I was around ten-years-old, I remember my mother telling me she couldn’t go to the store until she took the curlers from her hair. “Why?” I asked.
“Good heavens,” she said, “no one in town goes shopping with their hair in curlers.”
Those days are long gone, Mom.
Of course, lots of folks still spiff up for work. The tellers in my bank always look professional, some attorneys I know hit the office in a coat and tie, and the male teachers in my grandson’s school wear ties in the classroom. Yesterday I saw a woman, mid-twenties, walking down the street in a lovely black dress. She was striking not because of her looks--she was average in appearance--but because of the dress. She is also the exception rather than the rule. A good number of people I see during the day, of all backgrounds, run the gamut from hooker to beggar.
In reading Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, I am struck again and again by how people in ages past celebrated dress and fashion. Right now I am in his volume on the Middle Ages, and find that the Arabs, the Byzantines, the Europeans, the clergy, the knights, their ladies, and even the commoners (when possible) took pride in their clothing and appearance. He describes, for example, their beautiful and often costly adornments: their skillfully made and ornate dress, jewelry, and footwear, the makeup and perfume purchased by those who could afford it, the attention paid by men and women to hair styles.
What does our own sloppy attire tell us about ourselves? Are we too pressed for time to dress a little up rather than way down? Are we rebelling against the idea of beauty and culture? Or are we just too damned lazy to pull on a pair of slacks instead of wearing the sweats we slept in?
I have no idea.
Recently I was watching Casablanca with two ten-year-old granddaughters. One of them suddenly turned to me and said, “Why was everyone so dressed up back then?”
“People used to dress that way. They did every day. We just don’t do it anymore.”
“You do,” my granddaughter said.
I burst out laughing. My granddaughter gave me a puzzled look, then returned to the movie.
If I am now considered well dressed, a man representing haut couture, then I can draw only one conclusion.
We are a nation of slobs.
Go to any public arena—a sports event, a shopping mall, Wal-Mart, you name it—and you realize that the standard of dress for men and women, adults and children, has reached a low point in American history. Blue jeans are de rigueur; t-shirts with slogans, some of them billboards of obscenity, assault the eyes; pajama bottoms are worn to the grocery store; restaurant patrons appear at lunch looking as if they had just rolled out of bed; grown men wear baseball caps while eating steaks at Outback.
Let’s contrast our contemporary “style” with some bits from the past. Go online, Google “baseball games 1930s photos,” and look at the pictures of the fans. Most are males wearing ties and coats. The women are wearing dresses and hats. Take a look at television shows from the 1950s or at “Mad Men,” and note how stylish people used to dress both at work and in the home.
When I was around ten-years-old, I remember my mother telling me she couldn’t go to the store until she took the curlers from her hair. “Why?” I asked.
“Good heavens,” she said, “no one in town goes shopping with their hair in curlers.”
Those days are long gone, Mom.
Of course, lots of folks still spiff up for work. The tellers in my bank always look professional, some attorneys I know hit the office in a coat and tie, and the male teachers in my grandson’s school wear ties in the classroom. Yesterday I saw a woman, mid-twenties, walking down the street in a lovely black dress. She was striking not because of her looks--she was average in appearance--but because of the dress. She is also the exception rather than the rule. A good number of people I see during the day, of all backgrounds, run the gamut from hooker to beggar.
In reading Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, I am struck again and again by how people in ages past celebrated dress and fashion. Right now I am in his volume on the Middle Ages, and find that the Arabs, the Byzantines, the Europeans, the clergy, the knights, their ladies, and even the commoners (when possible) took pride in their clothing and appearance. He describes, for example, their beautiful and often costly adornments: their skillfully made and ornate dress, jewelry, and footwear, the makeup and perfume purchased by those who could afford it, the attention paid by men and women to hair styles.
What does our own sloppy attire tell us about ourselves? Are we too pressed for time to dress a little up rather than way down? Are we rebelling against the idea of beauty and culture? Or are we just too damned lazy to pull on a pair of slacks instead of wearing the sweats we slept in?
I have no idea.
Recently I was watching Casablanca with two ten-year-old granddaughters. One of them suddenly turned to me and said, “Why was everyone so dressed up back then?”
“People used to dress that way. They did every day. We just don’t do it anymore.”
“You do,” my granddaughter said.
I burst out laughing. My granddaughter gave me a puzzled look, then returned to the movie.
If I am now considered well dressed, a man representing haut couture, then I can draw only one conclusion.
We are a nation of slobs.