Rule Theory: White After Labor Day

The next time someone wants you to justify your white shoes or your white pants, don't bother. When your friend asks if they can wear white after labor day, you laugh in their face. The people who worry about the paradoxical rule of going sans-blanc will be losers in the light of you because they will not have read this. Why? Because there is really no reason why you can't.

So here's the story. Back in the day, the richest people of New York started the tradition of going to East Hampton during the summer. (East Hampton as you know is a peninsula off the coast of New York near Staten Island, just a few notches on the yacht SSW of East and West Egg.) People from the city no longer wanted to travel all the way to New England for the better beaches. So all of the richest people claimed the Hamptons, with all of their authority, to build houses that were not stuck in large buildings. In the summer of 1827, all of the rich people were ready to move on to their new land. The city had gotten démodé where with all the poor (ish) people who were trying to be rich during the time. But there was one think that they really want in the Hamptons. The problem: New Money Mobsters. All of the Manhattanites had a problem with the new flashy families in New York that had very little cooth in their scruples. So all of the richest families got together and devised a plan to keep the riff raff out of the new vacation town. 


When everyone showed up to East Hampton after Heyers, they only packed white clothes to wear. Knowing the level of paranoia that the Mob families have anyway, they thought this was a good idea to give the Mobsters an idea that they were outsiders in the Hamptons. Little did they know, the Mobsters like the idea of going above and beyond to feel like the richest families.  


The Mobsters and their families moved to the Hamptons for the summer and saw everyone wearing their white clothes. They felt uncomfortable this way, where with their paranoia. So they had their constituents in Manhattan to bring over all new white clothes in vans. Not something the families in the Hamptons were thinking would happen. So they stayed with their white clothes.


But everyone in Manhattan time took notice of the inventive chic the Hamptonites had come up with, via town talk because the immodest Mobsters were town talk. Everyone was all "OMG let's be like them cause they're 'the elite.'" So they wore white up until the end of summer. When all of the families got back to their homes in the city, everyone saw that they weren't dressed in their white clothes like they thought. They took of all of their white clothes and started dressing normal again. But every summer after that, the families went to their third homes in the Hamptons and people only wore their while pants, shoes and accessories in the summer. Since everyone pays attention to new york, the trend spread as wide as the world. 


So, yeah. That's the story.


Terminus.