Photo: mertkan tekin (Shutterstock)
I am a fashion-challenged person. My parents trained me to put on pants before leaving the house, but that’s pretty much where my sartorial education stopped. For most of my adult life I have wallowed in fashion confusion, unable to keep track of the rules governing when and where I was allowed to dress a certain way.
A lot of that confusion, I now realize, was because said “rules” were arbitrary—and stifling. Plus, people much cooler than me seemed able to break the rules with impunity, wearing things that were supposed to be “wrong,” and not just getting away with it but looking spectacular in the process.
As it turns out, the joke’s on all of us, because most of the once ironclad rules of fashion were abandoned by the cool and the trendy long ago; those of us who are less cool and untrendy are just getting the memo. Here are a bunch of old-school fashion “rules” you don’t need to follow anymore, fellow kids.
