Why Did We Stop Dressing Nice?

How did American society go from tailored suits and dresses as everyday attire to pajamas and Crocs in public? The easy answer is that we simply got lazy, but that’s only part of the bigger story. Here, we trace the century-long history of how public dress standards actually fell, not as a “collapse,” but as a combination of intentional decisions taking us away from “Sunday Best” all the way to the lowest standard of dress practically anywhere. Whether realized or not, this measurable change in how we dress was driven by a combination of mass production, Cold War cultural shifts, corporate efficiency, modern-day optimized fast-fashion, and remote work blurring the line between private comfort and public presentation. Let’s look at this together. Credit to Denis Shiryaev, glamourdaze, and NASS on YouTube for candid city footage #fashion #videoessay #history #menswear #sociology #streetwear #culture