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| Image courtesy of Toddlers and Tiaras - TLC Television |
Inside Style - by Annmarie O'Connor - as featured in The Dubliner - Thurs, 6th May
Dress codes. They ain’t what they used to be. It would appear that the boundaries of social propriety have stretched to accommodate new sartorial taxonomies and an attendant breed of woes. Recently, I received an invitation to a party in Paris which advised ‘wow wear’ attire. Bemused as to its definition, I resorted to Google with a litany of search results from the TLC show ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’.
The term, widely used in American pageant circuit, refers to flashy age-inappropriate clothing for children, often worn in conjunction with ‘flippers’ or fake front teeth. Mental scarring aside, I extrapolated what I could from its definition, settling on ‘sparkly’ and ‘fun’. Arriving at the evening soirée in a pearlescent soigné cocktail dress, I soon discovered that French dress codes, however ‘wow’ translate as ‘black’ and ‘casual actually’. I blame Isabel Marant and her ‘dress down’ disciples. Wagon.
Thankfully I’m not the only one cast adrift in this semantic raft. A friend emailed me this morning in a quandary about the demarcations of ‘black tie’: full-length, knee-length, midi, oh my! “I don’t have a rasher,” she confessed. “The last time I attended a formal event, I wore a black gown with matching elbow gloves, a fur stole and a top bun. When I arrived at the venue, the porter ushered me to the orchestra pit mistaking me for the opera singer. I still cringe.”
Indeed, such confusion is not solely a social remit but one that not increasingly includes the working realm. Ever since Obama introduced ‘business casual’ into weekend White House wear, there’s been some serious style Sudoku afoot. To suit or not to suit that is the question; not least whether one can finesse a Leinster jersey into the boardroom. Blue and white polyester aside, at least we know pink shirts to be a political blunder as proven by Wexford TD Mick Wallace with a special mention for Richard Boyd Barrett’s untucked hems.
Maybe Fine Gael chief whip Paul Kehoe is right, dress codes have ‘gone to pot’ but with that comes the opportunity to re-establish sartorial (and ergo social) boundaries. Perhaps politicians should look at boiler suits (if they’re to clean up the country), economists at hair-shirts and bankers at bullet proof vests – or straitjackets. As for the rest of us, we can don some ‘wow wear’ and watch the show.
