Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The Casual Look
A friend recently invited me to the opera. We both enjoyed it immensely, but one thing that caught my eye was how people were dressed. It ran the gamut from a lady wearing a long sequined dress to a man showing up in shorts and a t-shirt. It seems to me that the proper attire should have been something at a mid-point like my friend and I were wearing: stylish suits.
            Styles have evolved over the years, and the casual look is certainly front and center these days. That’s a good thing otherwise we women would still be lacing up heavy corsets held up by whalebone under long bulky dresses. 
           People of a certain age remember when denim was used solely to provide overalls to farmers and jeans to cowboys. Today, men and women of all ages wear denim for play, for work or even as evening wear with the proper accessories.
          A while back, in an effort to outsmart the competition I suppose some jeans manufacturers began selling jeans with holes down the thighs with a bigger hole at the knee. Between you and me who in the world foresaw that it would become a hit among a certain portion of the population? The designer understood that some people need to stand out. What better way to do that than by wearing expensive jeans that look as though they had been mauled by a tiger! Nevertheless, that fad is still part of the fashion scene.
            Nothing is stagnant when it comes to fashion taste. That’s the way it should be because attitudes change. A few decades back, if a teenager had been seen wearing  jeans with holes, kind neighbors would have gotten together to buy the poor kid a pair of decent pants. Today, with the casual look very much ingrained in society, anything goes and no one seems to notice anymore.
            Perhaps it frees all of us, no matter our age. I certainly do blend in when I wear my warm comfy cotton top displaying paint stains of various colors! My grandmother would have made certain that top would be thrown out, but who knows I might start a new trend!