REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE From; There are some pretty understandable r

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/THE REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE

From; http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/

There are some pretty understandable reasons why Seattle dresses casually.

a) Scandinavian heritage – we don’t signal ostentatiously.

b) When we do signal, we do so with sport or fitness. This signals that we are ‘locals’, not ‘those uncouth people.’

c) Because we signal with sport or fitness we wear clothes that signal recreation.

d) It’s changing, but it used to be that when you asked someone what they did, they replied with their form of recreatoin, not their job.

e) We have a tradition of rebelling against the ‘east’ and clothing was one of those ways of demonstrating our special-ness.

f) We imported a lot of engineers directly out of college and often attracted them with persisting the college lifestyle.

g) The hippie movement that drove population into the northwest, with more communal to portland and more work oriented to seattle, perpetuated our natural biases toward comfortable clothes.

h) people around the world generally signal with clothing if they have taste but less money. In the USA we signal with cars and houses. In the northwest we signal our effeteness with casualness.

i) Our young professionals are largely from the middle class already and they work in the suburbs and drive cars, instead of walking in the city where signaling with fashion often grants you access to dating opportunities..

j) In general, white (protestant) people signal with complexity (intellectual expression) rather than more base emotions – and seattle is the whitest large city in America.

k) Fashion dress (street fashion) is a preoccupation of the lower middle and upper proletarian classes (most consumers.) Seattle doesn’t have an old aspiring working class looking to demonstrate their fitness for inclusion.

l) in the attached map of the states, you’ll notice that high style over comfort areas are hispanic, and high comfort over style areas are anglo-germanic.

In simple terms, we view ‘trying hard’ at style to be ‘gauche’. For all the reasons above.