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Why Don't People Wear White After Labor Day? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 2: That's right.
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Speaker 3: We did another podcast earlier, but today we are here
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Speaker 3: to talk specifically about something that we've definitely addressed adjacently.
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Speaker 2: Eugene V.
2:28
Speaker 3: Debs, you might recall big figure in the labor movements.
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Speaker 3: He's sort of a top spell really is indeed a
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Speaker 3: top smell in that particular department.
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Speaker 2: But we're talking.
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Speaker 3: I think it may even have come up in that episode. Yes,
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Speaker 3: the idea of what's the deal is not even gonna
2:45
Speaker 3: do it. What's up with the idea of not wearing
2:47
Speaker 3: white or was it wearing white after Labor Day?
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Speaker 2: It's like a faux pas. It feels like an old
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Speaker 2: timey thing. It came up.
2:55
Speaker 3: We looked it up and it was like, oh, turns
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Speaker 3: out it was something rich people invented to make themselves
3:00
Speaker 3: stand apart from the rabble, which.
3:02
Speaker 1: Also goes back to I didn't mention this on airon previously.
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Speaker 1: It also goes back to the idea of dress code
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Speaker 1: as discrimination, which is how dress codes started, right to
3:12
Speaker 1: begin with.
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Speaker 3: Anything usually with code after it in those days, probably
3:16
Speaker 3: not a good code, you know.
3:18
Speaker 1: And so we are, as is our wont in ridiculous history.
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Speaker 1: We are going to learn more about a holiday shortly
3:26
Speaker 1: after it occurred. Yeah, we're good at that, but we're
3:28
Speaker 1: very good. Hey, I think we did. Okay, we're within
3:30
Speaker 1: a month, right.
3:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:32
Speaker 1: We want to give a shout out, of course to
3:34
Speaker 1: another integral part of our show, our regular super producer
3:40
Speaker 1: Max Williams, this rippin legend is too busy to hang
3:46
Speaker 1: out with us.
3:47
Speaker 3: But recently I thought you were referring to the ripping
3:49
Speaker 3: legend of his white pants. I thought you're going to say,
3:52
Speaker 3: but he left us with this ripping legend, which they did.
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Speaker 1: They allegedly did not rip, but he's still legend. And
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Speaker 1: remember he recently went to a wedding on a beach.
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Speaker 1: And so Max, like you are like me and hopefully
4:10
Speaker 1: like you ridiculous historians. He loves nineties R and B.
4:13
Speaker 1: He loves boys to men. So he bought a white
4:16
Speaker 1: pair of pants, right, He didn't.
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Speaker 3: He didn't have the white flowing linen shirt or the
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Speaker 3: or the or the jacket.
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Speaker 2: But he was halfway there. He was half way, and
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Speaker 2: that's what he said. He really was.
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Speaker 3: He felt that this was a worthy investment because it
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Speaker 3: was a light, you know, cool white pair of linen pants,
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Speaker 3: but all social underwek he bought specially as you would.
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Speaker 3: You know, you want you don't want it to it's
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Speaker 3: too sh it's too sheer. You know, you might see
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Speaker 3: the line.
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Speaker 2: Big coward through the white pants. You got to make
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Speaker 2: sure they match. But it's half a suit it's half
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Speaker 2: a suit. It's the first part of the suit investment,
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Speaker 2: which is not cheap.
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Speaker 1: And it was halfway through September as well, and that's
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Speaker 1: when it hit our pal Max. He said, I can't
4:57
Speaker 1: wear white right now because it's mid September. It's after
5:01
Speaker 1: the national holiday we have here in the US, Labor Day.
5:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I'm pretty sure he still wore them.
5:09
Speaker 3: It was just he occurred to him that maybe I
5:13
Speaker 3: should look into this. And I think through all of
5:15
Speaker 3: Max's research, to through our research, through our conversations with Max, we've.
5:19
Speaker 2: Determined that kind of wear white whenever you want.
5:22
Speaker 3: This is sort of a dated cliche with the history
5:25
Speaker 3: of it says a lot about the labor movement in general.
5:28
Speaker 3: It didn't occur to me until little later, but you
5:30
Speaker 3: might remember the terms, you know, white collar blue collar.
5:34
Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: White collar jobs are typically like higher paying jobs, you know,
5:39
Speaker 3: more affluent type jobs, and blue collar jobs are usually
5:42
Speaker 3: like manual labor jobs. And that had to do with
5:45
Speaker 3: the history that we're about to talk about here, what
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Speaker 3: it meant to be able to wear white, not have
5:50
Speaker 3: to worry about getting motor oil on your collar or whatever.
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Speaker 1: You know, because you don't do the physical labor. And
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Speaker 1: also it's funny that Labor Date in the US in
6:01
Speaker 1: modern times, everybody loves it because.
6:05
Speaker 2: It's a day off of work.
6:06
Speaker 1: You know, you have a barbecue, We have barbecues together
6:09
Speaker 1: sometimes a solidity. But a lot of folks don't know
6:13
Speaker 1: the origin of that, and I question whether that origin
6:16
Speaker 1: has been purposely erased. You don't care about the two
6:21
Speaker 1: union leaders in New Jersey who fought to take a
6:24
Speaker 1: day to recognize the hard working to your point, no
6:27
Speaker 1: blue collar people in their communities. So let's talk a
6:31
Speaker 1: little bit about the rise of the labor movement, the
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Speaker 1: creation of Labor Day, and why people are to your point,
6:40
Speaker 1: not supposed to wear white after it.
6:49
Speaker 3: Well as it stands now, you know, with that day
6:52
Speaker 3: of rest and the barbecuing and all that, it is
6:54
Speaker 3: meant to represent, you know, the achievements of the labor
6:58
Speaker 3: movements and to appreciate the labors of the laborers of
7:03
Speaker 3: the labor movie. How laborious, laborious. But you know, that's
7:09
Speaker 3: the idea is to celebrate you know, work, people that work,
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Speaker 3: both white collar and blue collar.
7:15
Speaker 2: But again, historically a lot.
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Speaker 3: Of organizing and unionizing and things like that have centered
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Speaker 3: around jobs that were easily exploited by bad people and
7:25
Speaker 3: high positions of power. They felt that they essentially owned
7:30
Speaker 3: these individuals, and that before the times of regulations that
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Speaker 3: protected these workers in the workplace so they could go
7:37
Speaker 3: to work and not fear for their lives, people were
7:41
Speaker 3: fearing for their lives.
7:42
Speaker 2: Oh and also we made peace with Sheryl Crowe.
7:45
Speaker 1: That was pretty cool goodness, although I did run away
7:48
Speaker 1: because you realize, you know, I told you and our
7:50
Speaker 1: palm Matt Frederick that one of her songs triggered.
7:53
Speaker 2: An emotion and not an emotion.
7:55
Speaker 3: I don't have a ton of them, I know, and
7:57
Speaker 3: you were I think you already hit your quota.
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Speaker 2: This was my third one.
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Speaker 3: Oh gosh, but no, right, I mean, like, before, you know,
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Speaker 3: the the advent of the labor movement, people were putting
8:08
Speaker 3: themselves potentially in bodily harm just for the privilege of
8:13
Speaker 3: making ends meet for their families.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: So, the US Department of Labor has has a good
8:19
Speaker 1: primer on this.
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Speaker 2: You can read it for free online.
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Speaker 1: It's called History of Labor Day, and they point out
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Speaker 1: it's always observed the first Monday in September, which, by
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Speaker 1: the way, that's a negative for me because you know
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Speaker 1: how I feel about all those holidays that are like
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Speaker 1: this is the you know, was it Thanksgiving? Is like
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Speaker 1: this is Thursday or whatever. Yeah, I don't think either
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Speaker 1: of us know until someone more on the ball text.
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Speaker 2: Let's just snow that we have the day off and
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Speaker 2: that's a shame.
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Speaker 3: And it wasn't until eighteen eighty six that a movement
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Speaker 3: began that, you know, asked for this to be made
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Speaker 3: a national holiday, and that's when some bills were passed.
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Speaker 1: It to just that pretty much a grassroots movement as well.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't until June twenty eighth, eighteen ninety for that
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Speaker 1: Congress passed an act making that first Monday in September
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Speaker 1: of every single year a legal holiday in the United States.
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Speaker 1: But what's interesting is in that explanation the Department of
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Speaker 1: Labor left out why Labor Day was.
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Speaker 2: A thing in the beginning.
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Speaker 1: That's the erasure I'm talking about, you know, to your point,
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Speaker 1: Let's go to Karen Zraich for New York Times. Karen
9:33
Speaker 1: points out that in the late eighteen hundreds, many people
9:38
Speaker 1: in this country in the United States, including Las Vegas.
9:42
Speaker 2: Which wasn't built by that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, many of these Americans toiled for twelve hours a day,
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Speaker 1: seven days a week, often in really physically dangerous, very
9:54
Speaker 1: low paying jobs. And this was of course the heyday
9:59
Speaker 1: of child labor in the US.
10:01
Speaker 2: That's right.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Karen puts it beautifully well tragically, but you know,
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Speaker 3: she writes very well, and you know, to our earlier point,
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Speaker 3: the conditions were often very dangerous, and there was nobody
10:13
Speaker 3: looking out for the workers to make sure they didn't
10:16
Speaker 3: lose a hand or a limb or their lives.
10:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she says children worked to on farms and in
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Speaker 1: factories and mines. Conditions were often harsh and unsafe. It
10:29
Speaker 1: was in this context that American workers held the first
10:32
Speaker 1: Labor Day parade, marching from New York City Hall to
10:36
Speaker 1: a giant picnic at an Uptown park on September fifth,
10:40
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two. And nol I love you know, I
10:43
Speaker 1: love a protest, I love a march, but also I
10:47
Speaker 1: love when that ends in a picnic called bear.
10:51
Speaker 3: I love a picnic, and I love a parade, and
10:53
Speaker 3: I love a good headline, which this one was working
10:55
Speaker 3: men on Parade. That sounds like a delight, and that
10:58
Speaker 3: came from the New York Times. The article actually appeared
11:02
Speaker 3: on the very last page, which is kind of weak.
11:07
Speaker 3: I would say, it seems like it should have gotten
11:09
Speaker 3: a little bit more, you know, preferential treatment than that.
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Speaker 3: But it did say in this buried lead that ten
11:16
Speaker 3: thousand people marched quote in an orderly and pleasant manner.
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Speaker 2: So that's so patrician. Maybe, you know, maybe that's why
11:24
Speaker 2: they put it on the last page. Maybe if they
11:26
Speaker 2: had like gotten a little rowdy, you know, it would
11:28
Speaker 2: it would have made bigger headline. Some of these peasants
11:31
Speaker 2: have military trainings.
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Speaker 1: See how they are, I see how they march in
11:35
Speaker 1: such an orderly man.
11:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not natural. They the workers were. The workers
11:43
Speaker 2: were the.
11:45
Speaker 1: Lower middle class members of the city, members of what
11:48
Speaker 1: you might consider like guilds, you know, like you know,
11:51
Speaker 1: certain things like bricklayers and shoemakers and dressmakers. Right, yeah,
11:57
Speaker 1: people working in printing presses, people rolling cigars, folks work
12:02
Speaker 1: in the dock. This wasn't yet an official holiday. And
12:07
Speaker 1: so what's interesting and tragic about this, and quite courageous,
12:11
Speaker 1: I would argue, is that a lot of those ten
12:14
Speaker 1: thousand people were risking losing their job by showing up
12:19
Speaker 1: by participating in this parade, which was actually a worker's
12:23
Speaker 1: strike across professions.
12:26
Speaker 2: That's right.
12:27
Speaker 3: In eighteen ninety four, we've talked about this as well.
12:30
Speaker 3: We had the Pullman strike, which was a big deal,
12:33
Speaker 3: disrupting trade and disrupting a lot of the rail movement
12:37
Speaker 3: there in the Midwest. And at this point, you know,
12:40
Speaker 3: the federal government was not about this kind of behavior.
12:44
Speaker 3: There was no protection for striking workers, There was no
12:47
Speaker 3: protection for standing up for your rights to not be exploited,
12:51
Speaker 3: and the government totally crushed them.
12:55
Speaker 2: Right.
12:55
Speaker 3: It was like a strike breaking type situation like the Pinkertons,
12:58
Speaker 3: you know, Like I mean, honestly, they may have employed
13:01
Speaker 3: the Pinkertons even you know, I heard a lot about
13:04
Speaker 3: you know, what do they call boss Tweet and folks
13:06
Speaker 3: like that, the Tammany Hall machine and all of that.
13:09
Speaker 3: There was a lot of breaking up these strikes and
13:12
Speaker 3: like you know, through physical force, through violence.
13:15
Speaker 1: In this parade, they clearly had the people on their side.
13:21
Speaker 1: And that is the history of the labor movement. On
13:23
Speaker 1: these signs in this parade slash protest that.
13:26
Speaker 2: Again ends in a picnic.
13:29
Speaker 1: I just like that, you know, in a parade, we
13:32
Speaker 1: love both these things. I'm terrible about it. I'm like,
13:34
Speaker 1: what do they have at the picnic?
13:35
Speaker 2: Anyway?
13:36
Speaker 1: On their signs they call for stuff like less work
13:38
Speaker 1: and more pay, make us only work eight hours a
13:42
Speaker 1: day and stop using convict labor. And the people cheered
13:47
Speaker 1: for them because there was a clear divide between the.
13:51
Speaker 2: Haves and the have nots.
13:53
Speaker 1: And as you said, the Pullman strike absolutely rocked the
13:58
Speaker 1: United States. The Pullman Car Company going by the Pullman
14:03
Speaker 1: Palace Car Company and fancy car and.
14:06
Speaker 3: We say cars, we're talking about like train cars. You
14:09
Speaker 3: know where this is also where a lot of the
14:12
Speaker 3: weirdness surrounding the culture.
14:14
Speaker 2: Of tipping began.
14:15
Speaker 3: Yes, the Pullman was inherently a bit of a racist
14:19
Speaker 3: flex from the wealthy towards these African American porters.
14:25
Speaker 2: I wouldn't even say a bit. It was very bad.
14:28
Speaker 1: And the h and the Pullman company lowered wages on
14:34
Speaker 1: the people who lived in these company towns. But when
14:37
Speaker 1: they lowered the wages, they didn't lower the rent. So
14:42
Speaker 1: this this company town now part of Chicago. Everybody, yeah, yeah,
14:49
Speaker 1: in a in a burst of creative now yeah, and
14:52
Speaker 1: so uh people obviously now they're getting robbed by their employer.
14:57
Speaker 2: There's no other way to look at it at that. Yeah,
15:00
Speaker 2: they can plain.
15:01
Speaker 1: And the owner, George Fullman, super humble guy you can
15:05
Speaker 1: tell by the name of his company, he.
15:06
Speaker 2: Said, fire them all.
15:08
Speaker 1: And they striked, and other workers caught on in the
15:12
Speaker 1: railway industry, and they were led by the guy who
15:15
Speaker 1: referenced earlier, Eugene V. Debs listened to our two parter
15:20
Speaker 1: about Debs. I know, Max loves him, and these folks
15:24
Speaker 1: when they're striking, they said, look, if a pullman car
15:28
Speaker 1: comes through here, we're not going to handle it. It
15:31
Speaker 1: is basically invisible. We're going to take the freight and
15:34
Speaker 1: passenger traffic to a halt. So they stopped. Chicago, which
15:39
Speaker 1: is a huge economic hub at the time. Tens of
15:43
Speaker 1: thousands of people just left work. Those strikes broke out,
15:48
Speaker 1: and then, like you said, they were fired upon, they
15:53
Speaker 1: were shot by.
15:54
Speaker 3: Were not just fired you know, by the fat cats.
15:58
Speaker 3: They were shot at. And we know that the American
16:01
Speaker 3: government is not incapable of this kind of thing throughout history.
16:04
Speaker 3: I mean, you had like student protests, it can't state,
16:08
Speaker 3: you know, being rocked by violence from the the government.
16:12
Speaker 3: You know, people being shot for literally just expressing how
16:15
Speaker 3: they feel.
16:16
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, and it's it's speaking of the US government.
16:19
Speaker 1: Let's shout out as super not great president Grover Cleveland
16:23
Speaker 1: named Mike Grover.
16:24
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, Grover the sesame street Monster's kind
16:26
Speaker 2: of cool.
16:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Grover Cleveland doesn't always get a top ten
16:33
Speaker 1: listing of best presidents. But he signed this bill into
16:36
Speaker 1: a law on June twenty eighth, eighteen ninety four, and
16:40
Speaker 1: that's when Labor Day became a national holiday. People are
16:43
Speaker 1: still guessing whether he had an ideological or ethical thing.
16:48
Speaker 2: I mean, he was a politician. Did he just want
16:50
Speaker 2: the votes to It's entirely like who knows? Who knows?
16:53
Speaker 2: You know, who knows what's what? Evil alerks in the
16:56
Speaker 2: hearts of men? The shadow that knows.
16:59
Speaker 3: But yeah, he did do this thing, and it became
17:03
Speaker 3: a national holiday. At that point looked a little different
17:06
Speaker 3: than what it does look like today. You know, probably
17:09
Speaker 3: was more reverential back then, you know, because it was
17:13
Speaker 3: so close to the labor movement. You know, now it's
17:16
Speaker 3: almost like people just kind of use it as an
17:17
Speaker 3: excuse to barbecue and don't really think about what it means.
17:20
Speaker 3: But to your point, been a lot of these holidays
17:23
Speaker 3: that are on the fifth Thursday of the second Tuesday
17:27
Speaker 3: of the month. Yeah, it's easy to lose track, you know.
17:29
Speaker 3: And it's like sometimes it's good to think about history
17:32
Speaker 3: a little bit, to remember why we even celebrate these.
17:35
Speaker 1: Things in the first place, especially when we know it's ridiculous.
17:37
Speaker 1: This is something that stands out to me, to you,
17:40
Speaker 1: and to our pow Max as well. And you know,
17:44
Speaker 1: speaking of collective action, one thing that is funny to me,
17:47
Speaker 1: funny to you, and I think funny to Max as well,
17:50
Speaker 1: is that labor Day seems kind of collective in its origin.
17:56
Speaker 1: History may never know who actually created.
17:59
Speaker 2: It, Isn't that funny?
18:06
Speaker 3: And usually in these types of stories, we did one
18:08
Speaker 3: on Mother's Day, Father's Day, you know, usually you kind
18:11
Speaker 3: of know and like there's sort of like a like
18:16
Speaker 3: usually it's parallel thinking involved, right with this one, it's
18:20
Speaker 3: it's a little bit different. We have some records that
18:22
Speaker 3: show that in eighteen eighty two, a guy named Peter J. Maguire,
18:25
Speaker 3: who is the general secretary of a kind of a
18:28
Speaker 3: very early you know union, the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners,
18:32
Speaker 3: and also a co founder of the American Federation of
18:34
Speaker 3: Labor said that there should be quote a general holiday
18:38
Speaker 3: for the laboring classes to honor those who and this
18:41
Speaker 3: is such good old timing language.
18:43
Speaker 4: Who from rude nature have delved and carved all the
18:46
Speaker 4: grandule we behold from rude nature, rough hun crawling fall
18:54
Speaker 4: from the slime of history.
18:56
Speaker 2: I love the way that was written.
18:58
Speaker 1: Also props to my I'll knowle here because you improve
19:02
Speaker 1: the end of that.
19:02
Speaker 2: And it was fantastic. Yeah, I know. Thank you would
19:05
Speaker 2: be awkward if you did a bad job. It's really
19:08
Speaker 2: good at it.
19:09
Speaker 1: So there's there are other issues. Other historians believe that
19:15
Speaker 1: a guy named Matthew McGuire, machinist named Matthew McGuire, we
19:19
Speaker 1: founded the.
19:21
Speaker 2: Unclear.
19:22
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the old idea of whether it
19:25
Speaker 1: was Robert Johnson, the guitar player who sold his soul
19:28
Speaker 1: to the devil in the Crossroads or Bobby Johnson, the
19:31
Speaker 1: harmonica player.
19:32
Speaker 3: Oh stam, they both could shred, that's for sure. I'm
19:35
Speaker 3: that both of them made deals with that old scratch.
19:38
Speaker 2: I'm wearing the wrong suit to talk about devils today.
19:41
Speaker 3: No, you look great, then, she just notice it has
19:44
Speaker 3: got really cold in here. I feel like ye, she
19:46
Speaker 3: ever running may maybe maybe it's the subject matter.
19:48
Speaker 2: Maybe we are so.
19:52
Speaker 1: Recent research appears to support this idea that Matthew McGuire
19:57
Speaker 1: was the originator of the holiday, because he proposed the
20:02
Speaker 1: holiday in eighteen eighty two when he was the secretary
20:05
Speaker 1: of the Central Labor Union in New York. And a
20:09
Speaker 1: lot of this comes from.
20:11
Speaker 3: Both secretaries, both McGuire's never in the same room together,
20:16
Speaker 3: one which one was, who's Tyler Durton?
20:18
Speaker 2: You tell me right?
20:20
Speaker 1: So if you look at the New Jersey Historical Society.
20:23
Speaker 1: Shortly after President Cleveland signed the law creating Labor Day
20:28
Speaker 1: as a national holiday across the United States, a paper
20:32
Speaker 1: called the Patterson He's.
20:34
Speaker 2: Coming on and you hear that? Yeah, I could probably
20:36
Speaker 2: hear that. Yeah.
20:38
Speaker 1: A paper called the Patterson Morning Call published an opinion piece,
20:42
Speaker 1: and Lil Wayne loves this, stating that the souvenir pin
20:45
Speaker 1: should go to the alderman, Matthew McGuire of this city,
20:48
Speaker 1: who is the undisputed author of Labor Day as a holiday.
20:52
Speaker 1: And if you think about that, that's what six foot
20:55
Speaker 1: seven foot is really about.
20:57
Speaker 3: Six foot seven foot bunch, come mister Tallian antiomeyven Ina
21:00
Speaker 3: that one.
21:01
Speaker 2: Oh, the Wayne version of it. Oh, I don't know that.
21:03
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but you know, but that song is also
21:06
Speaker 3: about laboring and about like well, it's probably about slavery, right,
21:10
Speaker 3: I mean the tally man is not the guy's boss.
21:13
Speaker 3: It's more like his overseer, right, I think I don't know.
21:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's a good question.
21:19
Speaker 1: And that was a very beautifully done segue, by the.
21:22
Speaker 3: Way, Nail well anyway, I mean, yeah, Wayne is kicking.
21:26
Speaker 3: I'm excited to hear what he's got to offer.
21:28
Speaker 2: No, we should we got to to McGuire's we it
21:31
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter who established labored it.
21:33
Speaker 3: What matters is that it was established and then it
21:35
Speaker 3: was passed into law, and now we should all do
21:38
Speaker 3: a better job at remembering what it actually stands for.
21:40
Speaker 3: But what about the pants? What about the pants?
21:43
Speaker 2: About the pant? About the pants and the shoes? Serial mom? Please? Yeah?
21:50
Speaker 3: But by the way, also speaking of Cereal Mom, John
21:53
Speaker 3: Waters just got like a like a Hollywood star, I believe,
21:56
Speaker 3: and just got in like they have a huge retrospective
21:58
Speaker 3: of his work. Ceial Mom is one of his lesser
22:00
Speaker 3: appreciated films, but it's pretty accessible. I think it's I
22:04
Speaker 3: would argue it's more accessible than pink flamingos. And it's
22:08
Speaker 3: basically about who is it. Who's the Kathleen Turner well done? Yeah,
22:14
Speaker 3: the serial mom who is a serial killer who murders
22:17
Speaker 3: people for being rude and having bad manners. And there's
22:20
Speaker 3: someone who she kills brutally disembowels. I want to say,
22:25
Speaker 3: for wearing white shoes after labor Day.
22:27
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah.
22:29
Speaker 1: And this question of labor day and fashion may have
22:35
Speaker 1: stemmed from practicality. According to Amber Chanical for Farmer's Almanac,
22:40
Speaker 1: she says, before air conditioning was invented, clothing choices were
22:44
Speaker 1: important when you wanted to keep cool in summer, keep
22:47
Speaker 1: warmer winter.
22:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, hence Max's delightful sheer linen pantaloons.
22:53
Speaker 1: I think he just wants people to know he's been
22:55
Speaker 1: working out.
22:55
Speaker 2: I know, it's sure he does.
22:57
Speaker 3: He's got some he's got some good gams on boys
22:59
Speaker 3: gets some gams.
23:01
Speaker 2: But you're right, like, think about the southern gentleman.
23:04
Speaker 3: It's fine linen suit sitting on the front porch and
23:07
Speaker 3: join them in Juli.
23:08
Speaker 2: I mean feel this, We're in Vegas. I'm wearing a
23:10
Speaker 2: linen suit, right, Yeah, but I think there are even
23:12
Speaker 2: versions of linen that are even more sheer and thin,
23:17
Speaker 2: and they're you know, almost like silk, but like linen
23:19
Speaker 2: that's very popular. It's like, what do you what a
23:21
Speaker 2: John Hammond wore in Jurassic Park. I also it is.
23:25
Speaker 1: I also I have my televangelist suit, but I stopped
23:28
Speaker 1: wearing it because you know, it gives me the spirits.
23:31
Speaker 3: I hear you, But this is the thing, right, So
23:33
Speaker 3: this was in a way like also the longer you
23:37
Speaker 3: wore this sheer linen kind of stuff, it sort of
23:40
Speaker 3: showed that you could take vacations later in the summer
23:44
Speaker 3: and that you had a little more you know.
23:46
Speaker 2: Means you had a little more ends.
23:48
Speaker 3: And then it became sort of a sign of decorum
23:51
Speaker 3: because it's almost like any further than that than Labor Day,
23:54
Speaker 3: they've decided someone arbitrarily.
23:57
Speaker 2: It's really just nothing to do with labor day. As well.
24:00
Speaker 3: Have another version of the story that more does, but
24:02
Speaker 3: this version is more about the calendar time and like
24:05
Speaker 3: just don't show off.
24:06
Speaker 2: Anything after that is just showing off.
24:08
Speaker 3: And it's also a way of codifying a dress sort
24:12
Speaker 3: of sense, you know, like fashion trend kind of like
24:16
Speaker 3: standards you know what I mean.
24:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer.
24:21
Speaker 1: So once that arrived, historically people would start to wear warmer,
24:26
Speaker 1: darker fabrics. Ye like blue collar shirts, right right. So
24:31
Speaker 1: fashion it's a good weave, and so fashion, the world
24:35
Speaker 1: of fashion decided, we're making it official, it's time to
24:39
Speaker 1: retire that white clothing post Labor Day.
24:42
Speaker 3: And it was thought to be a sign that you
24:45
Speaker 3: were doing a good job of getting acclimated to the club.
24:48
Speaker 3: If you were nouveau reche and you started to adhere
24:51
Speaker 3: to this schedule, then it was like, oh, they get it. Okay,
24:55
Speaker 3: We're gonna let them in a little bit more, you know.
24:58
Speaker 1: And then to your point, there's the other story, the
25:00
Speaker 1: idea that the rule came from the very wealthy in
25:04
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds. People wanted that lightweight, bright clothing,
25:09
Speaker 1: the breezy dresses. It meant that you were able to
25:13
Speaker 1: go on vacation, which a lot of people just can't do.
25:16
Speaker 2: That's right. I think I sort of mashed up the
25:17
Speaker 2: two reasons how they got there, but they are connected.
25:20
Speaker 3: I mean, the first one has just as much to
25:21
Speaker 3: do with the rich sort of setting the tone as
25:23
Speaker 3: the other.
25:24
Speaker 2: You know.
25:24
Speaker 3: Again, it's like anything beyond that point is just kind
25:28
Speaker 3: of like showing off. And it's just a matter of
25:30
Speaker 3: sort of like setting the tone and sort of being
25:33
Speaker 3: like this is this. It's like seasons in fashion lines.
25:36
Speaker 3: You know, you've got the fall season and all that stuff.
25:39
Speaker 3: It just people love to have little weird rules that
25:42
Speaker 3: only they know about, you know.
25:44
Speaker 2: And so to keep this.
25:45
Speaker 1: Focus here, we're going to put a horse in the race, folks,
25:49
Speaker 1: because you know, the one percent loves horse racing.
25:53
Speaker 2: If you don't want.
25:55
Speaker 1: To practice this idea of white being verboten after labor Day,
26:01
Speaker 1: then don't pay attention to it.
26:04
Speaker 2: Screw those certainly, you know, to to our point at
26:08
Speaker 2: the top of the episode.
26:09
Speaker 3: And I think what we pretty quickly found in a
26:11
Speaker 3: cursory Google is that this is utterly kind of a
26:14
Speaker 3: non thing. I think even in the circles that maybe
26:17
Speaker 3: it used to be a thing in people. You know,
26:20
Speaker 3: fashion rules are made to be broken, Trends are made
26:22
Speaker 3: to be set by, like, you know, new people, and
26:25
Speaker 3: it does seem to be if you have got a
26:27
Speaker 3: pair of pants, like Max, you let those wear those
26:30
Speaker 3: pants until they wear out in the crotch.
26:32
Speaker 2: Let those ponies run, let them ride, let them ru
26:35
Speaker 2: ride them, and let them run.
26:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as far back as the nineteen twenties,
26:39
Speaker 1: fashion icons like Coco Chanel quote unquote revolutionized fashion and uh,
26:46
Speaker 1: the industry of manufactured esthetics by keeping white as a
26:53
Speaker 1: permanent staple in her wardrobe regardless.
26:56
Speaker 2: Of the calendar. Where do you think j Lo got
26:58
Speaker 2: the idea? Yeah? I mean I text her, but probably
27:02
Speaker 2: someone else.
27:03
Speaker 3: Apparently it's in a rider that every at least it
27:05
Speaker 3: used to be in the whenever she's more popular.
27:08
Speaker 2: I guess she's still populout it.
27:09
Speaker 3: But that everything, the furniture and stuff backstage had to
27:12
Speaker 3: be white. The candles all had to be white. J
27:15
Speaker 3: Lo loves white. But to your point about Coocheel, she
27:18
Speaker 3: was just you know, being a what do you call that?
27:20
Speaker 2: And iconoclasts, you know.
27:21
Speaker 3: But then if you do that with enough confidence, it
27:24
Speaker 3: becomes the thing.
27:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there are still plenty of people who consider
27:29
Speaker 1: post labor day white clothing a no go.
27:33
Speaker 2: And that's fine.
27:34
Speaker 1: If you don't want to wear white after Labor Day,
27:38
Speaker 1: then don't. But you should not consider yourself in charge
27:42
Speaker 1: of other people's decisions if they have if they have
27:45
Speaker 1: something they like to wear, then they can wear it
27:47
Speaker 1: whenever they want, no matter what it looks like, no
27:49
Speaker 1: matter the season.
27:50
Speaker 3: And I think we may have stopped just short of
27:52
Speaker 3: like the kind of end of the other theory about
27:55
Speaker 3: the white like we mentioned the idea of a blue
27:58
Speaker 3: collar and darker clothes and how white was sort of like,
28:01
Speaker 3: I can wear this year round because I don't have
28:04
Speaker 3: the kind of job that will get me give my
28:06
Speaker 3: collar all schmoz.
28:07
Speaker 2: Because I don't what you say labor, I don't labor
28:10
Speaker 2: that much.
28:10
Speaker 3: Therefore that it was a way of them separating themselves
28:13
Speaker 3: from the have nots who would have had to wear
28:15
Speaker 3: darker clothes, think like a mechanic's onesie, you know, like
28:19
Speaker 3: the darker like denim or whatever. But that is where
28:25
Speaker 3: the blue collar white collar kind of divide came. And
28:28
Speaker 3: that version of the story to me, jives pretty well
28:30
Speaker 3: with the other version that it was. They're very interrelated.
28:34
Speaker 3: I think the true the truth of it lies somewhere
28:36
Speaker 3: in between the two.
28:37
Speaker 1: And hopefully we have solved the mystery a bit. We
28:40
Speaker 1: want to congratulate everybody who was hanging out, as well
28:44
Speaker 1: as our our pal.
28:45
Speaker 2: Matt Frederick O drinking from a coconut. Our pal Andy
28:48
Speaker 2: Kelly drinking from a coconut.
28:50
Speaker 1: Both drinking from coconuts. You were listening to Ridiculous History
28:53
Speaker 1: live at the iHeart Podcast Studio powered by Bose at
28:57
Speaker 1: the House of Music at iHeart Music Festival. We have
29:00
Speaker 1: so many people to thank Man you Debs. Yeah, I
29:04
Speaker 1: mean he's the modern eugenp Yeah, he really is to
29:08
Speaker 1: the people.
29:09
Speaker 3: And Max for the first time I think, I mean, well,
29:11
Speaker 3: he's been away before, but he's not here. But he
29:14
Speaker 3: is here in spirit because he compiled this this research
29:17
Speaker 3: doc for.
29:18
Speaker 1: Thanks to our research associate, mister Max Williams. Thanks to
29:21
Speaker 1: our guest super producer, Paul the black Jack Emperor Decades Wheezy.
29:25
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I just can't ignore him. He's just out there.
29:28
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks to Wayne who you know, Wayne, just you
29:32
Speaker 1: can just send one DM Okay, I get it. And
29:37
Speaker 1: thanks of course as always to the continued labor movement.
29:43
Speaker 1: Thanks to Christophrasiotis, Eves, Jeff Coat both here in spirit, Gabe, Lucy,
29:47
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Alice Cooper and thanks you No, thanks to you, Ben.
29:53
Speaker 4: We'll see you next time, folks.
30:01
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
30:05
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.