Aspects of English life: Dress
Dress, like pretty much everything else, is not to be taken too seriously. It is not done to be too intensely interested in one’s clothes—or rather, one should not be seen to be overly concerned about being fashionable or well dressed. The English make do with the next best thing: affected indifference—to pretend that they do not care very much about what they wear or how they look.
The affected indifference rule applies most strictly to English males, among whom any expression of interest in fashion or appearance is regarded as effeminate. And it doesn’t even have to be verbally expressed—any slight evidence of interest in dress, of taking a bit of care over one’s appearance, can cast doubt on one’s masculinity. Many English males almost feel obliged to dress badly, just to prove they are not homosexual.
English men are concerned about being correctly or appropriately dressed, but this is because they do not want to stand out or draw attention to themselves. They just want to fit in, to blend, to look pretty much like any other unquestionably heterosexual male. The result is that they all look very much alike. When they are not wearing the work uniform of suit and tie, they all wear more or less the same undistinguishing and undistinguished dress-down uniform of jeans and t-shirt/sweat shirt or casual trousers and shirt/jumper.
Younger males are, in fact, secretly highly concerned about conforming to the current street-fashions. Teenage girls are the only real exception to the affected-indifference rule: they are allowed to express their keen interest in clothes and concerns about their appearance—at least among themselves: in the company of males, they tend to play down these anxieties, and avoid mentioning the hours they spend poring over fashion magazines.
An upper-middle or upper class woman will not wear Waynetta Slob leggings and a grubby velour sweatshirt to go out to lunch at a smart restaurant—but she will turn up in something fairly simple and understated, without lots of heavy-handed matching and effortful accessorizing.
Among adult English females, the amount of flesh on display can also be a class indicator. As a rule, the amount of visible cleavage is inversely correlated with position on the social scale—the more cleavage revealed by a garment, the lower the social class of its wearer. The class rules on legs are rather less clear-cut, as there are two more factors to complicate the issue, namely: fashion and the quality of the legs in question. Lower-working-class females tend to wear short skirts, when they are in fashion and often when they are not, regardless of whether they have good enough legs, while ‘respectable’ upper-working, lower-middle and middle-middle women do not display much leg, even when both fashion and leg-quality would allow it. Among the higher social ranks, the more youthful and fashionable women may wear shorter and hemlines, but only if they have very good legs.