Hope y'all had a good Labor Day. I labored so much at not laboring that I plum wore myself out yesterday. Did get a couple photos edited but that don't count as work when you're doing it for fun.
Have you got your white clothes packed away yet? Can't wear white after Labor Day, ever hear that? I've heard mention of that many times but it never made much sense, so I didn't pay it any mind.
I had a bit too much coffee and free time this morning and decided to find out why. Turns out it's about cents rather than sense, a way for old money to distinguish themselves from the middle class.
To quote from that sage old oracle, Better Homes & Gardens:
the rule was invented in the nineteenth century by an elite group as a way to use fashion to separate those with money from those without. When the summer months were over, affluent residents would leave the city for warmer vacation spots. Wearing white represented that you could afford to get out of the city and vacation elsewhere when summer ended.
Since Labor Day typically represents the end of summer, a 'rule' was established that you shouldn't wear white after Labor Day if you didn't have the money to take fall and winter vacations.
So Labor Day, the holiday for the working stiff, gets used as a means to distinguish those that don't have to work from those that do. It's a peculiar sort of math but it adds up...
Photos are all of various panels of Mark Bradford's 'Pickett's Charge' exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum. BH&G article I quoted from can be found here
I'm wearing a white shirt reading this like 'ruh roh.'
I've never heard that, thanks. And thanks for the explanation. I swear it's just a shirt.
It may just be an east coast thing, I'm pretty sure that they considered anything west of Neeew Yoark as new money.
Better not let the man catch you wearing that!