Even in the Most ‘Formal’ Occasions It’s Often Anything Goes
BY JEN STEVENSON and RICHARD JACKOWAY
The idea for this story originated almost exactly a year ago at a funeral.
It was a hot August day and large crowd had gathered at a Central Coast church for the funeral of a crusty old man with a kind heart. Gail Bruce, a former San Francisco 49er, had made a lot of friends over 80 years, and there were the usual tributes and remembrances.
The surprising thing was the attire. While most of the assembled dressed in traditional formal black or dark colors, others came in jeans, shorts, and assorted other casual styles. Was this acceptable? What would Gail have thought? We’ll never know that, of course. But the question did prompt a discussion of SLO County’s love of casual wear.
Is it just the traditional laid-back California approach to life at work here? Or are SLO County residents even more casual in attire that the average state resident? Or, perhaps, is our dress indicative of a nationwide trend away from dressing up?
We asked these questions and others of people who are involved in traditional formalwear settings–wedding coordinators, fancy restaurant proprietors, businesspeople–and one etiquette maven.
Wedding Dress
So what about weddings? Traditionally, it’s been a consideration of those in attendance to be careful not to upstage the bride with their finery. But nowadays, is it more about not embarrassing the bride?
Wendy Russell, a wedding consultant with Everyone’s Favorite Wedding Center in San Luis Obispo, said she has seen her share of shoddy attire at weddings.
"We were just discussing how inappropriate people have been dressing at weddings," she said. "I was at a wedding in Paso three weeks ago, and I saw more tattoos than I cared to look at, shorts, and tank tops–it was gross."
One factor affecting the growing scarcity of formality is age, she said.
"It depends on the age of the audience–if there’s more younger kids," the 37-year-old Russell said. "The last wedding I was at, it was probably mostly teens and people in their mid-20s. Some of them were young teenybopper girls with tiny halter tops and dresses. I have a 14-year-old and it just wouldn’t be appropriate for her to wear that."
"I don’t know what is with the appropriateness of kids these days; it’s not how I grew up," she said.
John Robertson, banquet coordinator for San Luis Obispo-based Phoenix Fine Catering, agreed that there's a generation gap where rules of fashion are concerned these days and said that local demographics also come into play.
"There’s a lot of students here in this area. Younger people don’t really know what to wear or what’s acceptable," he said.
Robertson said that while there is sometimes a lack of etiquette, most people try to dress their best. Location, he said, plays a part.
"From what I notice people dress pretty nice, for this area," Robertson said. "It’s not like we’re in Los Angeles or San Francisco. San Luis Obispo is a relaxed, casual area."
He thinks people generally subscribe to an unspoken dress code for weddings.
"There’s a hidden dress code that people pretty much follow. There’s not a whole lot of ties–we could probably use a few more ties in the crowd."
Paulette Claire, who’s been consulting for San Luis Obispo County weddings for 15 years and is also an ordained minister, said sometimes an alternative theme for the wedding sets the dress code at less than formal.
"It depends on the theme," she said. "A lot of people do the formal theme, a formal church wedding, but a lot of couples don’t want to do formalities, so they’re going with themes, like Hawaiian or Western."
"I had a couple in Avila Beach getting married on the beach, and they invited everyone to come join and be barefoot on the beach with them."
Although many couples indicate on the invitation the formality or dress code of their wedding, some do not. When in doubt, Claire said, she thinks most guests have the fashion sense to take the high road.
"When it’s questionable, I’ve noticed people will dress up a tad more than down. I’ve seen people dressed down a little bit, but not somebody come in shorts and thongs, which to me would be inappropriate."
Once again, locale can play a part, Claire said, rendering common a style generally referred to as "California casual."
"I’ve seen gentlemen wear jeans with nice shoes and sports jackets, maybe a tie with their jeans–the California casual dress-up is what you might call it."
Living in a coastal community can definitely flavor the formality of the wedding. Linda Renfrow, director of catering sales for Mulligan’s restaurant at Avila Beach Resort, said the most casual local wedding she’s seen was themed, not surprisingly, after surfing.
"We did a surfer’s wedding where they had surfboards for arches, and the guys were in shorts and tuxedo jackets with Keds high-tops tennis shoes. That was a pretty good one," she said with a chuckle.
There’s still hope for appropriate fashion sense on the Central Coast, however, as far as Tammy Lauinger, owner of A Splendid Affair in Grover Beach, is concerned.
Lauinger, who has been a wedding consultant for six years, said many people are still showing up for local weddings in style.
"People are still very proper," she said. "Women are still wearing dresses, heels, and hats; men still have on coats, shirts, ties, and sports jackets. Generally, at weddings people are still being good about dressing up."
Work Wear
Go through downtown San Luis Obispo near Osos and Palm on a weekday morning around 8 or 9 and you’re likely to see a steady stream of well-dressed individuals walking through crosswalks and up the steps of City Hall.
While there is no required dress code for city employees, there is an implied standard of professional attire that they follow voluntarily, said Ann Slate, human resources director for the city of San Luis Obispo.
A large number of the 330 city employees wear uniforms on the job, including police, firefighters, utilities personnel, and parks and recreation personnel.
The rest–those who work at City Hall–wear professional attire "that represents a positive image" of city government, said Slate, who has been with the Human Resources Department for 10 years.
But three-piece suits and high heels are becoming far and few between, she said, relics of a different era in business attire.
"In the last 10 years professional attire has become much more casual," Slate said. "Some of our folks who used to wear neckties are more frequently seen in soft-collared shirts and Dockers."
The changes are evident with both men and women, she said.
"You don’t see full business suits very often, mostly shirts, ties, and slacks–jackets are left in the office and put on if maybe you have to go out and make a presentation or meet with a community council," Slate said. "Women are in a variety of professional wear, from business suits to really nice less-formal business wear.
"For women, particularly, things have gotten a lot more sensible. You used to see most women with a heel on their shoe. It was expected on a daily basis. Now women are much more often in sensible shoes because of our poor feet. You don’t see as many in high heels."
There are several reasons for this trend toward more comfortable apparel, and not all of them are because it just feels good. For example, it's not easy to ride a bike with a skirt on.
"People are taking alternative transportation, which we encourage. They are riding their bikes," Slate said.
It’s also a customer relations issue.
"We want to be able to relate positively to the public," Slate said. "Which can be difficult being overly dressed. When a city worker goes to a work site to discuss a blueprint, people will perhaps relate better to someone in more casual attire."
Besides, she said, times are just changing.
"It’s a statement that our culture is becoming a little less formal," Slate said.
Personally, Slate welcomes the changes as, like so many women today, she balances her career with motherhood.
"I have a 4 1/2-year-old," she said. "And when I go pick her up after work, a business suit just doesn’t mix with finger paint."
Slate said that the city government’s no-dress-code dress code has been successful.
"We’ve had discussion at work of the whole notion of should we or should we not have a dress code. I think we’ve had a good result with this," she said. "And I think the employees have enjoyed it."
For those who just can’t get comfortable enough in their business-casual threads, there’s always Casual Friday, a tradition practiced by many businesses. On Fridays, while employees must still look nice, at their own discretion they can wear jeans.
Casual Friday is also a hit at Charter Communications in San Luis Obispo, which has pretty much the same terms as City Hall–that on the last day of the work week, blue jeans get thumbs up.
The rest of the week, however, the company requires a certain dress code of its employees, dictated by region, according to administrative assistant Lisa Chadwick. The look? Business casual, of course.
"Most women don’t wear suits," Chadwick said. "They wear dresses, nice slacks, sweaters. Men wear nice slacks and not necessarily dress shirts, but they can’t wear T-shirts or polo shirts. We don’t have men wearing a lot of suits or ties."
"A dress code is set by the regional office because we want to have a professional, crisp image. The people coming into homes to install cable have to look professional and trustworthy," she said.
Nobody complains too much about having to comply with company standards on how they should dress, Chadwick said.
"Some people would like it a little bit more casual, but I don’t think it’s a big problem," she said. "They are told there’s a dress code and they are given it according to their department."
So far, there haven’t been any rebellions, she said, no Levi’s-wearing insubordinates.
"We have a very nice group here; there’s nobody who makes waves," she said.
If there was a choice of apparel, however, Chadwick thinks employees might look a little different.
"I think there would be more blue jeans," she said. "But it’s not a big hassle."
The proliferation of business-casual attire among American businesses has been by no means insignificant. So significant, in fact, is this market for casual business wear that Levi Strauss Inc. dedicated a whole portion of its website to the topic.
According to the company, in 1992 only 7 percent of United States office workers were able to dress in casual business attire every day. That leaped to 33 percent in 1995, jumped up to 53 percent in 1997, and is expected to reach 75 percent by 2000.
What is the definition of casual businesswear? "Relaxed professional attire," "flexible work attire," "combined comfort with style."
This "relaxed" and "flexible" new way of dressing for work has affected the majority of businesses across the country. Nine out of 10 U.S. companies have a casual businesswear policy of some sort, whether it be full-blown or an appeasing Casual Friday effort.
As far as the West leading the way toward a more casual workplace, the numbers would seem to support that. According to Levi Strauss, 61 percent of workers in the West dress casually for work, compared to 52 percent in both the North Central and Southern areas of the country, and 50 percent in the Northeast.
At PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant the only written dress code is for the employees who actually work down in the plant.
"The only dress code that we have written pertains to being safe," said Jeff Lewis, Diablo Canyon spokesperson. "Like wearing safety suits, wearing sturdy work shoes, no loose, flowing clothing."
Office employees have no restrictions on what they wear, but Lewis said that most people take it upon themselves to dress professionally. In fact, he said, people have actually begun to dress up more lately.
"There’s not a code, but you see more people wearing ties than you used to. That really has to do with the overall desire to have kind of a formality in our operations, and we think that’s appropriate at a nuclear power plant," he said. "You’re not told to dress a particular way, but there’s a common-sense approach."
While Lewis said most people conform to the same standard of dress, there’s always a maverick once in a while.
"In the office you’re going to see a large portion of the men wearing ties and slacks; you see a lot of Dockers. Women are usually wearing slacks, some dresses–it depends. It really is pretty typical, with the exception that in some areas you’re going to walk down the hall and you’ll see a Hawaiian shirt."
Lewis, who sometimes rides his motorcycle to work, has been known to wear jeans on occasion. The policy is liberal enough, he said, that a Casual Friday policy is unnecessary. However, it is important for employees to remember where they are.
"The policy is flexible, but this is a business environment," he said.
Out to Eat
How casual is the county’s dining-out scene? It’s so casual that we found that almost no local restaurants, even those offering fancy fare, require anything outside the health code mandates of shirts and shoes.
Beau’s Russia House Cafe & Tea Room is one of the few that has instituted a dress code, but even that is pretty loosey-goosey. Publicist Carol Slavin explains it this way: "We ask for business casual. It’s a little nicer than tank tops and flip flops."
But even business casual isn’t perhaps the formal level that one might expect if the tea house was indeed located in Russia or button-down Boston. "Shorts are OK," Slavin said, "as long as people generally respect the ambiance we’ve tried to create."
Most of the Beau’s clientele do gussy it up a bit, and Slavin said the chance to get a bit more formal is appreciated by many of her customers. "Young women are really tired of sports bars. They want to go on a real date," she said.
Your Sunday Best?
It’s Sunday morning, and Mass has begun at Mission San Luis Obispo. The church is crowded with worshipers. Men and women of all ages sit in the hard wooden pews to listen to the pastor as young children squirm and fidget in their seats.
An older woman sits near the front, missal clasped in her hands, eyes fixed reverently on the pastor. She wears a long dress and a hat affixed with bright flowers. Near the back, several college students are seated, respectfully listening to the service. They are clad in jeans and sweaters. Looking around the crowd, it's apparent that there is no dress code here.
Church: a holy place, worthy of the finest finery, right? Well, while putting on your neatly pressed Sunday best, finest hat, and shiniest shoes may have been prerequisites for worship once upon a time, not anymore.
In his lifetime of 37 years, San Luis Obispo Mission pastoral assistant Kevin Drabinski has seen some changes in how people are dressing for God. But while his flock may be leaving their ties and gloves at home these days, he doesn’t think they are oblivious of what they choose to wear to church.
"When I was a young boy I think people dressed more formally; it was more of a dress-up occasion to go to church," Drabinski said. "Even with that said, today people are mindful of where they are when they come to church, in terms of their dress, and they continue to be respectful of where they are. It would surprise me if people at church said it doesn’t matter what they wear."
The SLO Mission parish contains 1,900 registered families, and at weekend Masses the pews are filled with congregations of up to 450 people. The group is eclectic, a swirl of families, visitors, college students, and tourists. Their garb is just as mixed. But Drabinski said he does not find the lack of formality by many of those in attendance to be disrespectful.
"Our call is not to judge people by their exteriors in church, it is to look more at a person’s heart," he said.
Eileen Forrest, office manager of Grace Church on Osos Street, has attended church as far back as she can remember. She remembers how she and her whole family used to get dressed up to go to church. And she has seen how times have changed.
"We are a more traditional church, but to compare how we dress now to how we dressed 30 years ago, we’re much more casual," she said. "When we pull out old pictures, ladies were wearing hats, gloves, and dresses. Men were in suits and ties."
These days, she said, suits and ties are out, Dockers are in.
"There’s not a lot of suits that the men wear anymore," she said. "The older gentlemen who have worn them all their lives are still wearing them, but the younger men are wearing casual pants like the Dockers-style pants with sports shirts. Our ladies mostly come in dresses, a larger percentage in dresses than pants, but pants aren’t considered inappropriate."
New standards of acceptance for other people’s individuality, influenced by a more broadened view of the differences in people and cultures today, also affects what Forrest calls "a loosening of standards."
"We’re more of an individualized society, and we try to be more accepting of different ways of dressing. We have opened up the definition of what’s acceptable," she said.
Like Drabinski, Forrest said the emphasis should be less on the threads and more about theology.
"I would hope that, as a Christian, we’ve learned it’s not how a person is dressed, it’s what’s in the heart that’s important," she said. "You don’t have to come to church in a tie to be accepted by God."
Leon Maksoudian, a retired Cal Poly statistics professor, has attended Grace Church for 37 years, and he has watched firsthand as the formality of church dress has deteriorated over the years.
"I think that 35 years ago men came dressed in suits and neckties. Then they started coming to church without a coat but with shirt and ties, then they dropped the tie, and so on," he said.
The downward spiral hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, Maksoudian said.
"The casualness still is not so casual that you couldn’t tell whether people are going to the beach or to church," he said.
Miss Etiquette Weighs In
Regardless of the establishment, it does seem that at least shirts and shoes are mandatory at most places today. But if you ask Anita Shower, who pens the "Miss Etiquette" column in the Five Cities Times-Press-Recorder and is a local expert on the lost art of gentility, even shirts are becoming optional around town.
"Yesterday I saw a young lady on Marsh [Street] holding her blouse and walking down the street in her bra, and I was with someone and they said, ‘Do you have anything to say about that?’ And there’s nothing to say–what can you say when you see something like that?"
In her weekly column, on radio shows around the county, and at seminars she holds regularly Shower, who’s been known to dress a bit flamboyantly on occasion herself, attempts to teach people the finer points of a subject many are not too familiar with: etiquette.
The increasing influx of overcasualness has not escaped her sharp eye. She has a bone to pick with the T-shirt, for one thing.
"The T-shirt in the dictionary is categorized as underwear, yet most men and women wear them as a dress shirt," she said, then reciting the dictionary definition of "T-shirt" from memory: "A lightweight, short-sleeved shirt with a collarless neckline, worn mainly by men as an undershirt."
Strolling downtown, at church, attending weddings, everywhere she goes she has an eye out for fashion faux pas. And there’s plenty out there, she said.
"I’ve been to a wedding where women had come in short shorts," she said. "If it was my wedding I would have asked those people to leave, go home and change, and then come back."
People taking a more forceful position on the boundaries of acceptable attire is important in elevating the dress code, she said, and not to be underestimated is the power of education to stem the growing tide of general inelegance by starting early.
"I go to the Church of the Nazarene and I look at the way they dress there, and I don’t really see anyone there dressed casually, because they have people that instruct the children all of the time on etiquette–not to run, to be nice to each other, don’t shout, put your gum in a wrapper," she said.
Even more vital than the instruction received outside the home, she said, is that received inside the home early in life.
"Children and young adults aren’t taught anymore about what to dress and what to say," she said. "They have that bumper strip, ‘Question Authority.’ That’s the worse bumper strip ever allowed. Your parents are supposed to teach you. If you don’t teach young people, they will go to a wedding in short shorts."
Shower directs her fire at everything that she feels demeans societal boundaries. Even Casual Friday takes some of the heat.
"I don’t believe in Casual Friday," she said. "It doesn’t have any boundaries, and people come in with their shirts outside their pants, sandals, no hosiery is worn. Some people don’t comb their hair or brush their teeth. That to me is not casual, it’s being ill-kept."
Every year Shower leads a seminar for San Luis Obispo High School seniors, instructing them on everything from how to dress for a job interview to never, ever brush your hair at the table.
"It’s four and a half hours of teaching them things you would assume they know but don’t," she said. "Like realizing that women should wear hose with shoes and that men don’t wear hats inside."
She said the students are extremely receptive of what she has to teach them about etiquette, and that’s not an uncommon reaction.
"I find that people are very interested because they don’t have any idea about how to behave or how to dress to go to a particular function," she said, "They don’t know the niceties of conversation, how to keep one going; they don’t realize that ‘No problem’ is not the answer to "Thank you’; the answer to ‘Thank you’ is ‘You're welcome.’"
The plethora of people dressing too casually is a major indication of the big picture that Shower has dedicated her life to: that too many people suffer from a malady of bad manners these days. Dressing well, she said, isn’t for a few but is something everyone should do in the interest of bettering themselves and society as a whole.
"It has nothing to do with money; it has to do with pride and your concern for yourself and how you appeal to other people," she said solemnly. "Remember that children are always watching you. You are supposed to be a role model."
It could seem like a huge burden, carrying around such a heavy knowledge of manners in an etiquette-ignorant society, but Miss Etiquette said she doesn’t constantly criticize the courtesy-challenged but quietly observes them to use as examples for her next column or seminar. There is, after all, etiquette for enforcing etiquette.
"I simply take notes and use them for my column," she said. "It’s difficult to correct someone’s etiquette on the spot, say when someone mispronounces a word–it’s not proper to go over and tell them they did so."
The lack of manners in society may be the endless bane of Miss Etiquette’s existence, but it has its ups.
"I watch it all day long, what goes on, and it’s astonishing, it really is," she said. "But, on the other hand, I’ll always have work." Æ
Jen Stevenson is a New Times intern. Richard Jackoway is the managing editor.