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What you have to wear vs what you want to wear

Mo

(website)

Veteran

I was thinking about this. Lately I feel pretty confined by my current lifestyle (transportation issues) and climate (sticky hot). It seems what I want to wear and what my circumstances dictate I wear are further apart. I know we all have constraints in our life that impact our chosen style. Jobs, climate, terrain, environmental norms. I remember Rae struggling to express her style in the banking world confines, for example. Or Natalie's DH having a poison eye for some of the styles she likes to play with. So I know it's not just me. I get that! But here is my question:
How important is it to overall happiness to narrow the gap between what you must wear and what you want to wear? Is it a superfluous thing? Is it fine to just have weekends to express yourself if it's a job constraint? Or the few and far between dress up occasions if it's an overly casual environment? Or is it closer to the idea of living one's authentic life to reconcile the two as best we can? How do you feel when you can't dress in your preferred mode of self expression for whatever reason? And is changing your life in a way to move closer to this expression a worthy goal?

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Cindy S

(website)

Mo, great question, I have really been struggling with this one as I am preparing to return to a traditional/corporate work setting after years of freedom to wear an "authentic-to-me" wardrobe, it's tough! I'm creating a capsule wardrobe for this purpose, and even though I will be somewhat constrained (suits) I'm still planning to work within the constraint to be as authentic as I can...for me that means interesting color juxtapositions, a bit of vintage mixed with basics, unusual accessory scarves and jewelry. I plan to embrace Fully Cindy in my free time, but definitely adding Dollop of Cindy to the work wear!

Alassë

Veteran

Another great Mo-question! I'll be checking back on this one. I don't have a uniform-required job, so I can't provide any data.

Cindy S

(website)

I just saw that I didn't answer your final question: for me, it has been acceptable to work within some constraint because I am going for a bigger goal (financial security in retirement). While I don't naturally gravitate to suits, etc, I'm trying to make this a fun challenge. Our beautiful selves will always shine through, and more than we realize!

texstyle

(website)

Veteran

I think I feel a lot the way you do Mo. More recently I have allowed myself to spend more on things that I used to think should only be bought on a lower range for "everyday" wear. Example, $100 jeans or even a pricey, but super soft tee or slightly more stylish shoes. I wear jeans and jean shorts and tees SO often that I finally decided I can spend what I want to get the ones I want. For me it happens to be a really light weight jean by Big Star at the moment. I have a darker and a lighter wash of these and LOVE them and wear the heck out of them. Oh and I didn't hedge to cut off a pair of perfectly good and not very old faded jeans to make shorts when in years past I might have waited until I felt like they were "old." Partly why I wanted to do SYC this month is to try and force myself to focus on wearing some of the other items that I still worry about "ruining" in my casual, active life.

This silk/cotton popover is another example. It's super lightweight (cool) and I plan to wear it as an "everyday" item as well. It was on sale but still not cheap. And it's not for hiking in, but for wearing to hang out with friends, go day tripping, working at my computer, etc.

Part of the rationale I try to use is asking myself questions before I buy such an item such as: Will it be cool enough to wear outdoors in summer? Will it show stains badly? Is it comfortable enough to wear all day?, etc.

Lattice medallion popover

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Susie

Veteran

If I think about "happiness" in the big picture sense, I equate it with things like good health, a strong marriage, financial security, a meaningful career and good relationships with family and friends. So in that sense, being able to wear what I want isn't part of that big picture.

But in terms of being satisfied with my job and my day to day lifestyle, then being able to dress in the way I prefer does play a role.

I truly appreciate that my company's dress code and my position allow me to wear what I like most and what feels the most like me.

Mo

(website)

Veteran

So, for some of us, it's nice to be able to wear what we like, but not important enough to be a pillar of life's happiness.
I wonder if casual Friday ups morale or not in corporate settings. And if so, how much? If every day were turned into casual Friday, would the resulting happiness flatline with it becoming the new normal?
If I like to wear pencil skirts and heels, would moving to a rural area with unpaved roads and dirt underfoot undermine my happiness? Denise, you might have thoughts along those lines - not that you don corporate attire, but you know . . .

Susie

Veteran

What I like about a casual dress code, Mo, is that casual is not required; it becomes a choice. One can still dress up if that's the preference. But I love having the option to wear jeans on a day other than Friday. I would not want to have to wear a suit everyday but I would really hate to have to wear khakis and a polo shirt. Because that is so not me. Guess I better not work at Target!

With your example, my guess is that a rural lifestyle is not a good fit in more ways- and more significant ways- than choice of wardrobe for the person who wears pencil skirts and heels.

lyn*

(website)

Veteran

I toe this line all the time - luckily, the expectation from my superiors is that you dress "professionally" and I can get away with some of my conversational prints.

I think there's a big gap between what I wear and what my peers do, though. On call, they wear rumpled scrubs, which I refuse to do. Even not at work though - I wear wedges and a sundress to do shopping at the grocery store, and people stare openly - it's just not done here, I guess. But I don't really care (well, a little bit).

Mo

(website)

Veteran

funny you should mention khakis and a polo Susie - that's my golf job uniform It's about as un-me as pearls and a twinset.

kkards

Veteran

mo, its funny that you mention casual fridays. at my 1st job, many many years ago, we had business dress Monday -Thursday and casual fridays. everyone looked forward to friday. fast foward to my current job, where we have business casual. i still tend to dress more casually on fridays, becuase its kind of in grained in me, but the younger crowd, they tend to dress up on fridays. because that sets it apart for them.

ok, i realize that i didn't really answer your question. i think for my own piece of mind, its important that how i dress everyday, needs to be in some way, authentic to me.

Mo

(website)

Veteran

I suppose I have two layers to thoughts on this. The superficial - what can I wear within my life's parameters that pleases me? And the deeper, more value based - how much does expression of self (maybe individuality as well) matter to me? For some, individuality is not a core value and therefore I'd assume their personal happiness is not heavily influenced by it. School uniforms maybe were no big deal to them and freed life up to do other things. I dunno - just conjecturing here. I never had a school uniform

CocoLion

(website)

Veteran

Good question Mo. I am pretty happy with my life even though I do not get to express myself with my clothes as much as I wish. I have a specific dress code for work. It so does not reflect my own style, but then again maybe it does -- it reflects a more practical, less creative side that I don't give much respect to. I just sort of take this hard-working, willing to clean toilets side of Denise for granted. The reward is definitely *Shopping* -- as long as I'm not broke, right?

I have about a month of each year when I spend time in cities (SF, LA). Then I get to dress the way I like, plus the temps are milder which helps a lot. Dressing up is actually a bit stressful for me because I don't spend a lot of money on this capsule (opera, other events). So I try to make my separates work.

Texstyle - I so hear you on spending more for better casual wear. I actually think this year I am spending more or equal on casual clothes, but less on the trendy smart casual capsule. This is actually a step in the right direction in terms of CPW.

Mo

(website)

Veteran

Denise, would it be accurate to say that the city capsule more accurately portrays your style? See, I'm curious because while I don't see myself as a suburbanite, and some city vibes appeal to me, I don't feel I'm an urbanite either deep down.

Aziraphale

Veteran

How important is it to overall happiness to narrow the gap between what you must wear and what you want to wear?
Pretty darn important.

Is it a superfluous thing?
No.

Is it fine to just have weekends to express yourself if it's a job constraint?
For me, no. It wouldn't be fine. However, I haven't ever had a job where I was constrained. Also, I can think of jobs where I would be proud to wear the uniform: police officer or doctor, for instance.

Or the few and far between dress up occasions if it's an overly casual environment?
My style isn't all that dressy, so I feel pretty comfortable with how I get to dress day to day, although I wouldn't mind having a few more opportunities to wear high heels. (I'm glad my lifestyle doesn't require high heels, though). But for women who love to dress up, I can see this being quite a big frustration.

Or is it closer to the idea of living one's authentic life to reconcile the two as best we can?
It's important to me to reconcile them as best I can.

How do you feel when you can't dress in your preferred mode of self expression for whatever reason?
Perpetually irritated, probably.

And is changing your life in a way to move closer to this expression a worthy goal?
Yes. You dress for the job you want, not the job you have -- isn't that what they say? And for those who feel they don't get enough opportunities to dress up -- well, the best way to solve that is to develop a lifestyle where you regularly get to go out. Arrange to go out to the theatre, or to a cultural event. Phone friends. Arrange for a sitter, if need be. Go downtown. Put on your nice dress an fancy shoes as often as possible.

rachylou

Veteran

I get it. There's accounting for and accommodating conditions, and then there's oppression. Being kept down. Lol.

For me, however, I must say that getting real about what I do and how I spend my time has been really key to my wardrobe happiness. My wardrobe was incredibly non-functional before. I just didn't have enough of the clothing I needed.

It's interesting though. I think I'd rather a true uniform than a dress code. I find dress codes a bit of a setup. You are free to express your personality as long as you don't. Lol. An associated problem with dress codes is that they mislead. A true uniform is an on-purpose personality stonewall. With dress codes, it's a personality white-wash. For a person like me, it's kind of bad. It should be understood upfront I bite.

Hahaha!

I sort of enjoy the sartorial challenge, tho.
***
Flip-side: You know, MO, I don't know what I'd do in Florida. I'm pretty sure "country punk" would hold absolutely zero meaning for me in Florida. I, myself, would think that's just stupid. My *bite* would have to go more tropical; it would probably become what's known as *feisty-ness* (pronounced fay-stee-ness, you northern peeps ).

shedev

Veteran

I work in a group home for developmentally disabled young adults. We have a dress code that includes a company issue polo, jeans in blue, black, or khaki, and closed toe shoes that we could run in. To keep warm, we are allowed a long sleeve top in the same colors. In our house, we've mostly disregarded the dress code. As long as we are wearing the polo, nothing is usually said. They recently tried to reign us in, so far nothing has changed. A couple people take it far enough as to be inappropriate. As in wearing leggings that are thin enough to see the color of their underpants.

Anonymous

Hmm, this is an interesting question. Rachy has a good point about how dress codes are more about whitewashing personality, which might actually be worse than a full-on uniform.

To be honest, I think getting to be fully authentic in your dress at all times is somewhat of a luxury. To be gainfully employed, most of us have to accept at least some tension between our "real" selves and our work selves. Those who have jobs that are truly an extension of themselves, and can dress accordingly, are in the lucky minority. Just my opinion, though. (As an aside, I don't enjoy the rare casual Friday as much as I should. It's hard to strike the right balance between Competent Professional and Competent But Slightly More Relaxed Professional. And then there's always at least a few people who dress up anyway, and then you feel like a slacker for taking part in casual Friday. But I digress!)

I wonder if it's more problematic when sartorial tension arises in our personal lives, simply because it gets to heart of who we really are, not a role we're playing (employee). For example, the suburbanite who really feels she's an urbanite at heart. Or the SAHM who would love nothing more than to dress up. Mo, I can see you having that tension: preferring your life and wardrobe and Tahoe but needing to make your wardrobe work for life in Florida. I wonder if that tension is more problematic for the soul and psyche than work limitations, particularly if you really love expressing yourself through fashion.

Mo

(website)

Veteran

Rachy, I think you might be right at better describing a dress code as whitewashing a personality. I dislike my golf uniform, but I get that it is a uniform and not 'me'. I had a coworker see me with hair down for the first time after a whole season of it being up and back (for health code reasons, blah blah) and he said, 'woah, I didn't recognize you.' Uniforms can do that to one's personality.
Stacey, very astute. I was thinking along those lines about 3/4 the way through this post. I came to realize my discontent is as much about not living the authentic life I want to as it as not being able to dress to authentically express myself. Total fish out of water here. No way around that.

Ledonna N.

Veteran

My style is very toned down at work. But I am still happy because my career allows me to work outdoors as well as indoors. We are actually required to wear Polo's or button downs with our company name on the top right of them. I have had conversations with my director to ask If I could modify them. I find the collars to be very unflattering. I remove my collars and usually have the button ups and the polo's taken in at the waist by my tailor oh Thank heaven for a good tailor.

We usually get mens tops and that does not work for me I am only one of two women in our IT dept so they just want to save money so they buy the mens. We are either allowed to wear cargo pants or Jeans at work. So my choice is high waist wide leg jeans and either a Vest or cute suspenders. I think in every profession or job you can create your own style within boundaries.

I am quite happy with my work as well as personnel wardrobe. Although it took me years to develop a happy medium at work.

texstyle

(website)

Veteran

You know it's interesting that for a while when we all worked in an office we didn't really have a dress code per se, other than being dressed and not overly distracting and clean of course. But one year we bought a bunch of logo polos, caps and long sleeved logo shirts as customer appreciation items to give away. We ordered the staff each a couple of them in their size and said "Maybe we can all wear these once in a while or for special events when people are coming to visit, etc."

What happened was so interesting.

The staff started wearing their logo'd polos and shirts, mostly with khakis or jeans, quite OFTEN. My husband and I did this too (showing company support and all) and within a year or so it started to be the unofficial uniform. We even bought more variations and let the employees sort of choose various styles to get logo'd so they'd have some choices in their closets. It in fact become SUCH a uniform that I grew tired of wearing it but persevered in the interest of the group as a whole. I still have the navy fleece jacket as we all got one of those for Christmas one year (and everyone LOVED them and wore them all. the. time.)

I'm not sure what this says but I think it says to me that for some, a uniform is definitely preferred. Maybe even makes some people feel more proud of their work.

I'm a creative type so for me a uniform can feel confining, but I can see if you allow people to change up the uniform somewhat that it can work out.

If I do start another different small business in the future that involves retail activity I would probably consider uniforms as long as they had some level of creativity and personality. For example, a small bar/café could have t-shirts, polos, and button downs all printed with the company logo in some form or another (some may be more graphic and design oriented) and allow some variation on colors as long as it fits in with the general colors of the brand.

Aida

Veteran

A very interesting topic and discussion. Your italicized question:

How important is it to overall happiness to narrow the gap between what you must wear and what you want to wear?

That gap strikes to the core issue for me. The WHY of the "must wear" bit. For myself, I think that regardless of the situation there is SOMETHING that I could wear and feel enough like me to enjoy/do whatever it is. The tricky bit is finding it (hence my active-casual capsule woes) and getting enough of it into any given outfit. After all, the clothes should serve me and I'd like to be able to just do what needs doing.

Right now my work allows me the creative freedom to dress however (and work dressing is truly my creative outlet these days), but there are other environmental norm/body type constraints at play that limit FULLY dressing how I'd want. And that's okay with me, I push when I can and when I feel the need to push. If I didn't have that freedom, I would simply have channel my primary creative energies elsewhere and do my best to find happiness within whatever the constraints were; I'd probably also up the dressiness of my weekend wear to look more like my current work wear.

The real issues would pop up if life itself wasn't what I wanted. Then all kinds of disingenuousness comes into play and finding any happy medium gets hard. Possibly too hard. At that point I'm not too sure what I'd do, but I think I'd either A) try to change the situation (if that meant moving, I would seriously consider it) or if that's not possible then B) do my best to send that creative energy into something I loved to make the most of the situation, and do my best within the constraints to find small sartorial wins. That's a tough situation to be in :\

deb

Veteran

Mo, this is a very interesting topic. At first my thoughts leaned toward the 'I have no gap, really' then upon further thought I changed my mind. I want to wear beautiful heels, maxidresses, mules, necklaces, and many other items but I cannot because of health issues. The shoe issue is common amongst many of us. I am not sure everyone has the longing I have but some twinge of desire. Does past dressing styles affect your feelings?

Joy

Veteran

Mo, this is an interesting topic. I suspect that if one is generally happy with how their life is going, then any sartorial confinements and restrictions become an interesting challenge rather than bring them down. As long as I feel happy and confident about myself and what I'm accomplishing in life, it really doesn't matter to me what others think of what I wear. Luckily I live in a place where people look at the person, not so much what they are wearing. Putting together an outfit for a group event is often easier than being ready with bright, interesting conversation, wit, and remembering names and interests, especially names and ages of children that you have never met.
To answer your question, weather extremes and health issues can affect my outfits but that doesn't affect my happiness. When I first started teaching, I could not wear the mini skirts that were flattering on me. I was just thrilled to be graduated with a job I loved and felt was important, faith,
friends and family who cared about me, and my life full of possibilities to explore. I still feel that way and have at each stage of my life.

Niki Lea

Veteran

Mo, great topic. This is something I think about a lot because we're on such a strict budget. What I would wear if I could regularly shop and what I do wear are miles, even worlds apart. I try hard to look nice, but sometimes I'm very hamstrung by what I have to work with.

Laurinda

Veteran

An excellent question, and many thoughtful responses. Living in a region with 4 full seasons I 'get to' wear an arctic parka with insulated overpants and snow boots, then tank tops with sandals over the course of 5 months.

I wish my feet were not too fussy to wear cute flats or pretty heels, but I've made peace with my earth-bound mules and Birkis. Being busty I wish I could wear strapless dresses or spaghetti strapped tops, instead of straps wide enough to allow for a full-support bra. The grass is always greener, and I bet there are those who would love to have my curves.

Overall it does not affect my inner happiness. Just as I accept that I cannot wear a bikini at -40F/C; I make the best within whatever the constraints are.

MsLuna

Veteran

Thank you for posting this, Mo! While working on my minimalist wardrobe (update in a new thread later), I realized that I won't be happy in my personal style unless it fits my lifestyle. Comfort has become my primary priority now, and if what I wear just doesn't match my climate and my daily activities, I wouldn't be happy. HOWEVER - I do have a specific aesthetic and that has to be satisfied as well. I'm still working on finding ways to marry my natural, 15 degree to 25 degree Celsius way of dressing with the hot humid suffocating heat here in Toronto. I've managed to translate my tall boot addiction to edgy summer sandals and I'm still looking for appropriate casual summer toppers to dress down my jersey dresses (otherwise they look like cocktail dresses).
As a trained designer, I love the challenge of having limitations! That sort of boosts my creativity, in a way!

Caro in Oz

Veteran

Great question & one that seems to call for a couple of glasses of wine of choice & a long conversation

I don't have to worry about a work dress code but when I moved to this very conservative yet casual beach lifestyle town I felt like a fish out of water & like I'd stepped back in time about 30 years. None of my dark city clothes seemed to feel right here especially in the long hot summer & my husband's work events with REALLY conservative colleagues were not my idea of fun either.

Fast forward a few years, we are still here & I have adapted.

So I guess my answer to your question, "How important is it to overall happiness to narrow the gap between what you must wear and what you want to wear?" is it depends.

I love expressing myself through clothing but we all have limitations that we have to work around, whether they be financial, physical or environmental I also know that when I go back to my old city I soak it up & appreciate it much more than I did when I lived there

ManidipaM

Veteran

Honestly, it gets me down to not be able to dress as I want to. whether it is because of MOTG lifestyle or a messy workplace or just the gosh-darned weather at 110 degrees C plus or 90%+ humidity or just budget... I chafe under restrictions, I guess. it is not so much about expressing individuality though yes I hate uniforms generally. but then I don't mind dressing like others or wearing 'my uniform'. it is just that I am mulish about feeling corralled or barred in any way.

gryffin

Veteran

Mo - this is a really great question, in part because I'm not sure I really understand it. I guess I feel I have just as many nuances to my style as my personality. I am at home in my jeans/boots/blazers as I am my dressy capsule because they represent different sides of me. I have had to wear a uniform for work, but it never occurred to me it was not my style because I strongly identify with what I do. But I've never been asked to wear something that made me feel inauthentic - that may be luck or good karma!! but all my styles work, play, dressy etc still feel like me!!

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