What's in a Dame

No slave to rules of fashion

It's the week after Labor Day.

Rather, it's the week after Belabor Day -- the day we dispute the deadline for white apparel and begin questioning the legitimacy of all style statutes.

By now I've come around on most of my apparel absolutes. I've embraced that blending gold and silver jewelry is no felony. I've accepted that horizontal stripes can look smart and that mixing patterns can be pleasing. I've stopped obsessing that shoes and handbags should match. I've even warmed to the idea of black and brown together. (Even if I still can't cope with black and navy together. Baby steps.)

In recent years, I've felt emboldened to break the no-white-after-Labor-Day dictum -- with giddy cutting-a-law-label-off-a-mattress satisfaction -- only to learn it's not necessarily doctrine anymore.

So says the Emily Post Institute. From emilypost.com:

Then

Back in Emily's day -- the nineteen 00s, 10s and 20s -- the summer season was bracketed by Memorial Day and Labor Day. Society flocked en masse from town house to seaside "cottage" or mountain "cabin" to escape the heat. City clothes were left behind in exchange for lighter, whiter, summer outfits. Come fall and the return to the city, summer clothes were put away and more formal city clothes donned once more. It was an age when there was a dress code for practically every occasion, and the signal to mark the change between summer resort clothes and clothing worn for the rest of the year was encapsulated in the dictum "No white after Labor Day." And it stuck.

That and most people didn't have air-conditioning back then. And there weren't Starbucks selling Frappuccinos.

And there were no crop tops and cold-shoulder blouses. White back then meant light to those wearing more proper clothes.

But times have changed, according to the modern-day Posts -- the great- and great-great-grandchildren of Emily who bring us this great news:

Now

Of course you can wear white after Labor Day, and it makes perfect sense to do so in climates where September's temperatures are hardly fall-like. It's more about fabric choice today than color. Even in the dead of winter in northern New England the fashionable wear white wools, cashmeres, jeans, and down-filled parkas. The true interpretation is "wear what's appropriate -- for the weather, the season, or the occasion."

Still, many people can't skirt around this old fashion maxim.

"Noooooo," moaned one Facebook friend when I posted a meme of preppy The Fresh Prince of Bel Air's Carlton: "White After Labor Day? Thug Life" and asked "Who's with me wearing white today?" last Tuesday. There were several hold-outs:

"I'm a true Southern gal and you will not see me wearing white after Labor Day."

"I've always stretched the white after Labor Day .... but only until Halloween. After that, I don't wear it again until Easter. And I'd never ever wear white to a wedding. That's the job of the bride."

"I'm too old and old school. I wear white leather tennis shoes (see? Too old to remember they're called 'sneakers' now!) but that's it after Labor Day!"

In a wave of faux fashion rebellion, I did wear white. For multiple days I picked patterned but mostly white dresses. (Only I had to do nude and black shoes -- not white. Never white. I already have giant feet that white does nothing to minimize. Pee Wee Herman is not the effect I'm going for.)

By multiple I mean just two. And then I was over it and back to my usual black. Ultimately, I'm just way too messy for unseasonable fashion mutiny.

So I'm officially against white after Labor Day (and any day for that matter).

I'm going with the conventional tide.

That's easier than going to buy more Tide pens.

White me an email:

jchristman@arkansasonline.com

What's in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman 'hood. You can hear Jennifer on Little Rock's KURB-FM, B98.5 (B98.com), from 5:30-9 a.m. Monday through Friday.

Style on 09/12/2017

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