Have we gone too casual?

Is there a proper dress code with the 'pandemic' isolation? Don't think so, I've never been a clothes hound (NO ties, and you think masks are hard to breathe in). My career choice was causal and not based on first impressions, skills mattered not how you dressed for those mandated innumerable boring corporate meetings.

I was advised not to wear watches, rings or ties while at work. More things to get caught in the machinery. Once while a girl was wearing a scarf while running a burster, her scarf became entangled in the feed rollers, luck would have it, if a co-worker hadn't been nearby to hit the off button no telling what could have happened. Never seen another scarf.

I remarked to my wife after waiting 5 hours to see a doctor on an ER visit, everyone looks like a medical professional with their scrubs and masks, For all I know anyone could have been a janitor or doctor, everyone dressed the same.

How fancy do you dress to pickup takeout at a cafe, Doordash drivers could care less. I don't do weddings or funerals very often either.
 

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I'm casual 100% of the time anymore .... retirement life has made be very easy going on all fronts.
I only own ONE jumper/dress with boots, if I ever needed to dress up for something.

I see people around me dressed up for holidays and occasions all the time ... that's fine.
I just don't do that..
 
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I believe that the hippie generation helped us to rethink our priorities.

IMO for many folks, it's about what they are able to afford.

It bothers me to see people at a funeral dressed in sloppy casual clothes. If they are scrubbed, combed, ironed, and all tucked in I feel that they've made an effort to show their respect and that's enough for me.
 
I have a wedding to attend in a little more than a month. It says "formal attire" on the invitation.

I own two "dressy" dresses. I can't get into either of them, thanks to a couple of years of "Covid eating" and most recently an overindulgence in Christmss goodies.

I'm not going to be losing 50 pounds by then, so it's off to buy a dress, dang it! Not looking forward to it, I'm not. I hate to spend the money. I've tried the consignment shops.....no luck. Everything's spangled to a fare-thee-well or looks like it was fashionable "once"....maybe 40 years ago.
 
I don’t circulate much beyond visits to the Sr CTR, MD appointments and occasional lunch out with DD. But I’ve noticed lunching at “”nice” restaurants the extreme casual look—the garage- cleaning outfits on both men & women, young women in short shorts and midriffs when it’s almost freezing out, etc. And these aren’t cheap places. A good lunch for 4 could run $150 with tip.
I’m wearing a nice blouse or sweater & slacks. The Srs dress in neat casual.
But one thing I just hate is when medical staff of all levels wear black scrubs. I just feel like they could be filthy. I don’t insist on starched white like the olden days but light enough to see if any stains are there,
 
Being a stay at home mom and raising two daughters and a housewife my entire married life I have always gone casual around the home as I was always taking care of the kids and cleaning up. I also wasn't one to get all fancied up for going grocery shopping or simple things outside of the home. As for things such as weddings and funerals of course I would dress up and any other fancy occasion as well. I still do the same today.
 
The dramatic change in dressing began in the late 60's. It began in California and gradually spread across the USA. Even here in California urban areas, few male high schoolers wore blue jeans but rather collared shirts and informal dress slacks. Girls always wore skirts/dresses. In 1963 San Diego at the height of the surfing craze, high school guys were wearing slacks not blue jeans. My dad as a white collar aerospace worker always wore a suit. As a high school junior in Columbus, Ohio, guys all wore trench coats to school as did men with white collar jobs under their suits. By the 1970s all that changed in California with dress codes abandoned, then spread elsewhere.

Most of those leading the informal change in California were in fact not natives but rather those transplants from Eastern states that perceived casual as the cool West Coast style they were seeing in movies and tv. Soon many were abandoning blue jeans for shorts. By the 1990's I was seeing fair numbers in high tech corps wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals as more began to flaunt their cultural attitudes. Today there are many California urban men that will stubbornly wear shorts to work places on even the coldest winter days. During major Sierra snowstorms tv news often shows car fulls of people heading for Reno casinos stuck in snow berms on the sides of trans Sierra interstates needing tows wearing just t-shirts and shorts like loons.

Personally I'm informal at home but at work as a tech worker in labs and offices always wore casual dress slacks and collared shirts even though fair numbers of others were extreme casual. As a short Caucasian male, I always disliked formal dress clothes because clothing manufacturers and retail store buyers tended to hate short people, offering little compared to medium/large sizes. Well other than the Levi brand. What most offered was invariably bulky squat, rarely fitted. That began to change with the explosion of immigration since many were shorter slimmer.
 
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Georgiagranny said:
I remember reading and seeing a photo in Time magazine early in the 60s of women shopping in a supermarket in California wearing bikinis. Another photo showed women shopping with their hair in rollers. Eeek.
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Betting the bikini photo was snapped in a beachside town where some folks were running in for a couple of items to round out beach picnics. Can't recall ever seeing a woman grocery shopping in a bikini. She'd have been stared at as the exhibitionist she probably was and would likely have been asked to cover up under the "no shirts, no shoes, no service" rules.

Back in the 50s & 60s many women shopped with their hair in rollers but with a scarf covering them. Never did so myself nor did my mother. It struck me as very poor planning to have to go out in public like that. Back then the only men in a grocery store during weekday daytime hours were the guys who worked there so perhaps the women in rollers felt free to look a little sloppy.

I can't remember what I wore to the last funeral I attended, but the bigger point was that I showed up, grieved with her family and lent support. I certainly wasn't in jeans, but was probably more casually attired than people in areas outside Los Angeles. Our dress codes are very relaxed, which is right in my wheelhouse.

My doctors, nurses, dentists and other medical staff typically wear scrubs and casual shoes. Why wouldn't they wear comfortable, relatively inexpensive, easily laundered workwear? No doubt plenty of medical personnel's "good clothes" were ruined by errant fluid spatters from patients or medical treatment aids.
 
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I think it is hard to find a women's suit that looks good if you are overweight, at least not at the price range/stores I had to buy in. I think I looked better at job interviews when I gave up trying to dress up and just wore nice black jeans and a dressy top. Tried blazers but they didn't look right on me either.
'Nice' clothes feel very uncomfortable to me, too lightweight, thin, slippery. And in t-shirts I like a solid feel to the cloth, I'm not fond of modern thin-stretchy fabrics that are used in t-shirts, and I don't see how the fat people in work aren't embarrassed to wear them since they cling to every roll of back fat. OTOH, I know those people at work are virtually minimum wage and probably can't afford to buy nicer clothes.
 
JaniceM said:
Decades later, when I was in High School, they were called Hot Pants.
My friend's father blew his stack.. he said "I don't care if they're hot pants or cold pants, YOU'RE not wearin' them!!!" :ROFLMAO:
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I had a length rule in my home growing up with skirts, dresses, and shorts and I was a teen of the 80's when girls were wearing the mini skirts that Madonna wore. Not me though. My parents would have killed me and locked me in my room. :ROFLMAO:
 

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