Reply To: Men wear black and white?

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#1987520
akuperma
Participant

Styles are like that. If you look at clothes over time you see changes reflecting a mix of what the goyim are doing (which we sometimes ignore, but not always), as well as halacha, and dynamics within our own community. For example, goyim switched from long suits to short suits (for “business wear”) because King George V did, and gave up hats because President John Kennedy misplaced his top hat and walked bare headed at his inauguration parade – we weren’t impressed and kept wearing kapotes and fedoras. Whereas goyim look at their politicians and media celebrities, we look at our rabbanim, who tend to be proper and dull on matters of fashion (which in fact, are largely irrelevant to the survival of the world). However the frum community is influenced by the goyim (note that pants are worn universally by males, which clearly would not have been the case 400 years ago, and that many frum people wear neckties which wasn’t the case 200 years ago).

But note the changes in other areas of clothing such as shoes. Non-leather shoes, and even sneakers, are increasingly worn whereas once only formal leather shoes were acceptable. Polyester and other artificial fabrics have increasingly become common in the frum community. When wearing a short (i.e. normal length suit), we tend to follow the goyim’s styles but about 10 years late (so double breasted suits are becoming much less common). And except for the requirements of married women covering their hair and all women covering up much of the rest of their bodies (which is contrary to the goyim’s minhag in western countries), women’s fashions closely follow those of the goyim.