What have we lost? Style. A sense of occasion. HG refers to the fact that few persons dress formally for a restaurant dinner these days. HG is not talking about black tie. We don’t live in Downton Abbey. But, appropriate dining-out clothes for HG does mean a jacket for men. Women, given their natural virtues and virtuoso abilities in scarf administration, can get away with much more informality. When HG was younger, everyone dressed up to go to a restaurant or the theater. Women even had “cocktail dresses” and “restaurant suits” (They also had girdles but that’s another story). Looking stylish added a festive quality to many activities. With baby boomers in the 60s rejecting the formalities of their elders, the road was paved for today’s young hipster style of plaid shirts, jeans and beards. Overall the wholesale embracing of casual style seems to HG, depressing and conformist. HG agrees with Woody Allen’s statement: “Eating at home is just eating. Eating in a restaurant is a party”. So. Listen to HG: Make the world a better place and dress to dine out.
I completely agree. The sloppiness that passes for “acceptable” is utterly depressing. Men in flip-flops and cargo shorts. urgh.
Baseball and giveaway caps are not acceptable headgear (nothing is) in a restaurant.
I well remember lunching with HG in my early days in NY, and admiring, even marveling at, the snazzy suits he sported. Nothing I hang on my own body came close to his style. I also recall that when AOL and Time Warner announced their merger, the two CEO’s posed for photos in open necked shirts. Nothing very edifying about that!
“Suits” is now a pejorative descriptive. And, the garb of the CEOs wasn’t edifying and neither was the merger (as far as the shareholders were concerned).