Senior Abbey Masters organized a group of students to wear white on Sept. 6, the day after Labor Day, to challenge the fashion rule that has been around since the 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI’ve always wanted to wear white after Labor Day,\u201d Masters said. \u201cAnd then I was like, \u2018Well, what if I got a bunch of people in on it?\u2019 It was kind of like a funny joke\u2026. It\u2019s been a bucket list thing of mine for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Masters\u2019 friends rallied behind her decision and recruited students across campus to join in. One of her friends, senior Abby Foust, got several students from the class she peer guides for to wear white. Foust said Masters\u2019 petition was a way to bring joy to campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAbbey is just so good at celebrating small things and just doing something that’s silly and fun,\u201d Masters said. \u201cIt’s just one small way to kind of bring joy to our friend group\u2026 <\/strong>and it’s an easy way to spread it to other people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Masters and Foust said they didn\u2019t know the origins of the no-white-after-Labor-Day rule, though their parents mentioned it growing up. Assistant professor of apparel merchandising Rebecca Boaz said there\u2019s debate around the rule\u2019s beginnings, with some saying it\u2019s a class issue and others an issue tied to the weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boaz said when this rule originated, the upper class were the only people who wore white, because they wouldn\u2019t get their clothes dirty from working and because they could travel to warmer places during the fall when everyone else had to dress in darker, warmer fabrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhite was kind of a status symbol or a classist symbol, and it kept the working-class people from wearing it,\u201d Boaz said. \u201cMost of the time, you\u2019d just wear white in the summer. However, if you were of a high enough class and you didn’t have to work, you could go on holiday in the fall. And wearing white after Labor Day meant that you were wealthy and that you were going somewhere where it was warmer to vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boaz said the rule came back into prominence in the 1950s when a group gathered and decided to bring this fashion rule back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other side of this debate believes the rule stems from our tendency to wear white in the summer, since it reflects light, and darker colors in cooler weather, Boaz said. She said Labor Day represents the unofficial end of summer for many people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boaz said wearing white after Labor Day is going to become more common. Fashion magazines are all talking about white clothing, and now the decision to wear it has more to do with the weight of the fabric and where people live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don’t think it’s such a hard and fast fashion rule anymore by any means,\u201d Boaz said. \u201cThe whole classism thing has gone away, so it doesn’t have anything to do with that anymore. I think it’s whatever you’re comfortable doing. It shouldn’t be something that you get judged because of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With this younger generation, traditional fashion rules like the Labor Day rule are going away, Foust said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think a lot of fashion rules like that traditionally in the south are kind of out the window,\u201d Foust said. \u201cI think our generation is pretty good about challenging those traditional fashion roles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Masters encouraged students who may be apprehensive about wearing white after Labor Day to go for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just feel like [wear] whatever you feel most confident in, whatever makes you feel put together and like you are ready to crush the day,\u201d Masters said. \u201cFor me, I just have a lot of white clothes, and I like them, so I figured I might as well just keep wearing them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Senior Abbey Masters organized a group of students to wear white on Sept. 6, the day after Labor Day, to challenge the fashion rule that has been around since the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15199,"featured_media":17164,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17165,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17163\/revisions\/17165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}