Dressing for dinner

What are we supposed to wear? Was the question I posed to my sister for a fund raising dinner at Estonia House to be held in Sydney. (She and some of her children travelled from Melbourne and our family were traveling from Canberra together.) Dressing the body is often about manners. To pay compliments to a host of a dinner or party, we dress to please the host. The occasion, the time and location also are enmeshed with fitting in and distinguishing our personal identity. Dressing is a very complex social process. When I guest lecture students in fashion theory, I use the example of what I wear to lecture in. I don’t turn up in what I wear to bed. They would be embarrassed that I hadn’t understood the situation correctly (the time and location) or mentally unwell, or I did not respect them. We like to indicate that we can ‘read’ the occasion – it reflects we are socially adept. So our conversation of what we were to wear, even though both had pack bags ready for the trip north, continued. Well, we were paying $75 per head, it was an evening dinner in the city and the Estonians always like to dress up. The weather did not come into it (and we were catching a train). For women, evening wear, despite the evening being the cooler part of the day, always means very light clothing. Sheer and reflective fabrics and bare shoulders usually prevail. Jewelry is very important in the evening. The heels on shoes are higher and finer, and strappy, despite the possibility of dancing. (Training in meant a ten minute walk: down to the river, crossing a foot bridge and along a path next to the railway line.) For most of us out-of-towners in the group, we could also wear what would be ‘new’ to our hosts. They wouldn’t have seen my expensive French shirt that most of my friends have already seen. I had not seen my sisters ‘new’ sleeveless dress. Dress, or more particularly fashion, is also about indicating you understand that in the fashion cycle wearing something new is a high priority in ‘dress practice’. Dress practices that are correct within the social milieu also show you have control. (My daughter just this moment texted me on this, but in relation to another dress practice, tattoos.) You have the economic ability not only to attend the function but to buy the clothes and accoutrements suitable for the occasion. It also shows you have the time to attend to your body, the hair and the makeup. We all were complaining there was only one waist up mirror in the house where we were all staying, but we also checked with each other – which earrings, which shawl – these shoes? Offspring traipsing back to the bedroom. Humans are so acutely aware of the presence of others. Adam and Eve go from a state of nakedness to one an awareness of others looking at their bodies. Ruth Barcan in her book “Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy’, writes on the ‘unnatural nature’ of dressing the body and of how we react to how we perceive others view of us. By the time we arrived at Estonia House we all felt we looked wonderful, everyone else thought they looked wonderful and we fitted in, but balanced with distinction.

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