What to Wear – From a Singaporean’s Perspective

I am not an expert in fashion, nor do I read fashion magazines. But common sense has always been my trusted companion in my idea of dress, and common sense tells me a lot about the way Singaporeans dress these days.

Everywhere you go, you seem to see everyone dressed in more or less the same:

T-shirts, shorts, slippers, with some degree of variation between gender and age groups.

It’s perfectly understandable, that a casual dress sense is more comfortable given our very warm weather, which has been unbearable in recent weeks. But certainly there are ways to look good and be comfortable at the same time?

I think there are a few reasons why Singaporeans tend to dress in such monotony.

The first is obvious: Our weather. Singapore’s weather has always been warm, and the weather these days were almost punishing. Given the warm weather, it’s already uncomfortable to be in long sleeves, let alone the blazers, vests and jackets that feature in our fashion magazines. But other countries with warm weather didn’t seem to be too inhibited by that. I’ve been to Taiwan in the middle of summer, and the youths pay attention to what they wear.

The second is our culture. We don’t really have a culture that judges us by what we wear. Being a pragmatic society, we don’t believe that being affluent requires us to dress in a certain way. This is unlike other societies, like Hong Kong or Japan, where going to work in a suit, no matter the weather, and no matter your position in the company, is a mark of respectability.

Of course, this is probably going to change. De Maitre’s post on the nouveau riche in Singapore has highlighted their association of affluence to materialism. So the nouveau riche engages in conspicuous consumption, and dress in such a way to reflect their new status. Of course, the results aren’t always as they expect.

This is because, as De Maitre suggested, they have the financial means, but they don’t have culture.

Another way to look at the cultural perspective is that we don’t set norms in dress codes. We have not been influenced by the distinction between high and popular culture, so there is ambiguity and confusion in our treatment of cultural events.

Take for example going to the cinema dressed in the finest, and going to the Esplanade theatre in T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.

In other countries, going to theatres (like Broadway) badly dressed can mean being barred from entry.

As I have mentioned in my post, On Stereotyping, we need to learn to dress for the occasion.

And in addition, being able to dress well is the way of reflecting our own cultural sensitivities and affluence.

Thanks to Pork for inspiring me to do this post.