Word: whiteness
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...post-Labor Day moratorium on white clothing and accessories has long ranked among etiquette hard-liners' most sacred rules. As punishment for breaking it in the 1994 movie Serial Mom, for instance, Patty Hearst's character was murdered by a punctilious psychopath. But ask your average etiquette expert how that rule came to be, and chances are that even she couldn't explain it. So why aren't we supposed to wear white after Labor...
...common explanation is practical. For centuries, wearing white in the summer was simply a way to stay cool - like changing your dinner menu or putting slipcovers on the furniture. "Not only was there no air-conditioning, but people did not go around in T shirts and halter tops. They wore what we would now consider fairly formal clothes," says Judith Martin, better known as etiquette columnist Miss Manners. "And white is of a lighter weight." (See pictures of the fashion looks of Sarah Palin...
...beating the heat became fashionable in the early to mid-20th century, says Charlie Scheips, author of American Fashion. "All the magazines and tastemakers were centered in big cities, usually in northern climates that had seasons," he notes. In the hot summer months, white clothing kept New York fashion editors cool. But facing, say, heavy fall rain, they might not have been inclined to risk sullying white ensembles with mud - and that sensibility was reflected in the glossy pages of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, which set the tone for the country...
Whatever its origin, the Labor Day rule has perennially met with resistance from high-fashion quarters. As far back as the 1920s, Coco Chanel made white a year-round staple. "It was a permanent part of her wardrobe," says Bronwyn Cosgrave, author of The Complete History of Costume & Fashion: From Ancient Egypt to the Present Day. The trend is embraced with equal vigor by today's fashion élites, Cosgrave notes - from Marion Cotillard accepting her 2008 Academy Award in a mermaid-inspired cream dress to Michelle Obama dancing the inaugural balls away in a snowy floor-length gown. Fashion...
Instead, other historians speculate, the origin of the no-white-after-Labor Day rule may be symbolic. In the early 20th century, white was the uniform of choice for Americans well-to-do enough to decamp from their city digs to warmer climes for months at a time: light summer clothing provided a pleasing contrast to drabber urban life. "If you look at any photograph of any city in America in the 1930s, you'll see people in dark clothes," says Scheips, many scurrying to their jobs. By contrast, he adds, the white linen suits and Panama hats at snooty...