If Starbucks Can Roll Out Pumpkin Spice in August, Why Can't We Wear White After Labor Day?

As I dressed for Saturday’s University of Virginia football game I pulled on my favorite white jeans and white T for the last time. (I topped my ensemble with a splash of heinous orange, just to show my support for the home team. )

On Sunday, I wore my favorite white skirt to church. For the last time.

Today I’m leaving home at 4:30 a.m. to be in the studio and ready to go on the air at 6 for an extended Kerry and Mike Show. Since the place will be empty because of the Labor Day holiday I reckon it’s safe to wear shorts. So I’m going to wear my favorite white ones. For the last time.

Until Memorial Day, that is. I’ll dust them off in May for the official start of it’s-all-right-to-wear-white season.

I know, I know, there isn’t actually a law that will get you arrested on a fashion violation, but those of us who grew up with strict mothers know that they would never approve of wearing white after Labor Day. 

Lord knows, when my mother was alive she disapproved of most trends: grown women like me wearing Chuck Taylors, for instance, or leaving the house without lipstick.

But wearing white after Labor Day? She was never going to bend on that one.

So to honor my late mother, and against my better judgment, I will wash my whites tonight and stick them in my old cedar chest till spring.

Unless someone can convince me that I’m insane, that is. I’d really like an excuse to keep wearing the jeans. 

No White After Labor Day is a rule that every American female of a certain age knows. But where did it originate? More importantly, how do we get rid of it?

Newsweek gives us one explanation in a Sunday piece headlined, “Is No White After Labor Day Fact Or Fiction? Here’s What the Experts Say.”

The "rule" that you cannot wear white after Labor Day spans back to the late 19th century and was reportedly invented by an elite group to use fashion to separate those with and without money. At the end of summer, wealthy Americans would leave the cities for warmer vacation spots, bringing white clothing that required special care with them. The poorer workers stayed in the city centers and wore darker attire.

“It is true that white—especially in the days before washing machines—keeping your clothes white implied having a servant to keep your clothes white," Jacob Remes, an associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study specializing in U.S. labor history told Newsweek.

As Labor Day represents the end of summer, the rule was established that you shouldn't wear white after the holiday if you don't have the money to take fall and winter vacations. The no-white rule starts after Labor Day and lifts on Memorial Day on the last Monday of May, at the beginning of summer.”

Could this possibly be true? I mean, was my working class mother secretly a social climber, hoping people would figure her to be someone who headed to Palm Beach at the first frost?

Nah.

And she definitely didn’t come from a family with servants. Heck, they WERE the servants. My father’s family came from equally humble origins. His dad was a janitor and his mother was a domestic.

Yet both of my grandmothers adhered religiously to the No-White-After-Labor-Day rule.

Nevertheless, I was buoyed by this story. After all, my white jeans would look great with a navy sweater once the weather cools down. Perhaps I should let Newsweek choose my clothes rather than a stylish woman who was born in 1925 and has been gone for 24 years.

Then I looked at who wrote the piece:

Jack Dutton.

A man. Of course. What could he possibly know about the wrath of mothers on their daughters?

Then again it’s as hot as Hell’s front porch here through December. Perhaps Tidewater was one of the warm climes rich Yankees fled to when the weather turned cold and the poor people up North donned their drab dark duds.

Could that give those of us in the South an exemption from this rule? Clinging to threads here, white threads.

OK, since it’s a holiday, I’m seeking advice:

Do I have to retire my summer whites tomorrow? If not, will my mother find a way to smite me?