wear white in thesummermakes good sense . Desert dwellers have known for thousands of eld that white wear seems to keep you a footling bite cooler than other color . But wearing whiteonlyduring the summer ? While no one is completely sure when or why thisfashionrule came into effect , the best guess is that it had something to do with snobbery in the late 1800s and other 1900s .
After theCivil War , the wives of the ace - rich ruled eminent society with an iron clenched fist . As more and more masses became millionaire , though , it was unmanageable to differentiate between respectable old money family line and those who only had vulgar new money . By the 1880s , to evidence who was satisfactory and who was not , the women who were already “ in ” felt it necessary to create dozens of fashion rules that everyone in the know had to follow . That way , if a fair sex showed up at the opera house in a dress that be more than most Americans made in a whole year , but it had the awry sleeve length , other women would live not to give her the time of day .
Not fatigue white outside the summer months was reportedly another one of these empty-headed rule . White was for hymeneals and resort habiliment , not dinner parties in the declension . Of course , it could get passing hot in September , and wear white-hot might make sense . But if you wanted to be appropriately tog out you just did not do it . Labor Daybecame a federal holiday in 1894 , and society eventually assume it as the lifelike endpoint for summertime fashion .
Not everyone followed this rule . Even some socialites continued to shoot the trend — most famouslyCoco Chanel , who on a regular basis weary white year - orotund . Though the formula was in the beginning enforced by only a few hundred women , over the X it trickled down to everyone else . By the fifties , woman ’s magazines made it clear to middle category America : White wear was dug out onMemorial Dayand went back into computer storage after Labor Day .
These mean solar day the fashion humankind is much more relaxed about what colors to wear and when , but every year you will still learn people say that blanched after Labor Day is insufferable , all thanks to some snobby millionaires who decided that was a fashion no - no more than 100 age ago .
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A version of this fib ran in 2019 ; it has been updated for 2023 .
