Preface. This is both a small and big topic in my humble opinion. Let me keep the shortest version. The long version includes self image and projections, attitudes, special occasions and what’s in fashion. The short version is clothing only based on what we are doing and who we are on a daily basis. I’m also going to focus on the United States of America’s southwest region. It is the one I know most and it covers warm and cold weather. My readership is likely familiar with it also. People from all over the world know Los Angeles, CA for instance.
If you took a snapshot of people out in public midday during the work week of Monday through Friday this is a hint at what people are wearing and what it means to an average person. Writing this because people from other countries may not realize what it looks like to the regulars around town. Hoping also my Hawaii people(friends and strangers) get why I wear certain things when I leave California and visit Hawaii and I have difficulty switching over to island styles. Here is what it looks like.
Who is dressing the best midday during the work week? Usually professional office personnel. This includes both civilian and military. Next are the people who visit those people. Below that group are people in schools whether teacher or student. Then it is the service people whether they are in uniforms or just good work clothing. Below them are the people being serviced in casual clothing such as someone taking their car to get repairs, grocery shopping. Below those consumers and customers are their children and people they hire with cash. Children may or may not dress as well as parents and guardians. People who are only working on a cash basis tend to be dressed the least expensive and important wearing clothes suitable for work ranging from errands to hard labor.
What gets confusing is when people dress lower or higher than they actually are. For instance, some wealthy people just wear very casual clothes in public–they may have been working on their own car or yard, or were out doing a sport such as surfing, skateboarding, bicycling and others. Also there are low workforce people and migrants who have paid for or stolen more expensive clothes and are pretending things–like being more important than the full time wealthy, military, school and office people.
It gets even more confusing when important people dress very casual like a migrant or service person and migrants dress like people working in administration and politics. I find it WORRISOME when well dressed poor people behave entitled around actual important people dressed casually who look scared and terrorized.
I need to pause here. It is troubling me to write this out.
If you believe in the ‘wind’… it is admitting I was “terrorized by Kremlin partners” and forced to look like a migrant to Russians in Hawaii in my youth. Those partners may have been migrants from south of the California/Mexico border.