Geographical Dress Codes

Fifty percent of people who hire me as a stylist express a desire to find the balance between respecting the style and dress code of wherever they live and dressing how they want. Thirty-five percent say they don’t care; the rest either haven’t considered it or want to fit in with the geographical dress code. 

When I began rebuilding my wardrobe, I lived in Kansas City, where my once vibrant wardrobe had whittled down to athleisure-adjacent clothes mixed in with a few mishaps. Three months into my wardrobe project, I moved to Northern California, a barely five thousand-person town. I worried about my new wardrobe and struggled for the first few months. I wanted to wear my sheer Alexander McQueen silk button-down (and I did), but I felt out of place in it. 

As I untangled this tension between the dress code of this new town and my wardrobe desires, I seriously considered what our style of clothes and how we wear them say about who we are and where we live. 

I first noticed how differently I dressed in Grass Valley vs. Kansas City vs. NYC vs. Seattle in December while packing for a trip to Seattle. I packed items like my wool blazer and vintage leather slingbacks, which I had yet to make plans to wear in Grass Valley. I wore them twice in six years of owning them in Kansas City. The following month, I wore my green stiletto patent leather boots as rainproof shoes to meet with the school principal, and I didn’t feel out of place. I flew to NYC for work in late February and brought back some East Coast flair to my West Coast wardrobe. By the end of March, I had settled into an over-the-top winter uniform, and I didn’t want the season to end. 

The May brought warmth; for the most part, I didn’t know what to wear. At the beginning of summer, I began rethinking my previous summer uniform of athletic shorts, a rumpled button-down shirt, the week's sandals, and the season's bag. While I considered function, fit, fabric, and style as I assembled my summer wardrobe, I returned to this question: What does it mean to respect the geographical dress code of where you live without completely losing yourself?

Summer wardrobe needs

My summer wardrobe needed separates and accesories that could elevate or balance my ensembles regardless of where I was. I put together a summer mood board as a guide for what to look for and made a list of every need and want.

This rough draft guided almost every purchase I made this summer. You can see where I wrote, “NO JEANS” under the "pants" section as a reminder to my former self, who diabolically wore jeans over 85F. But I am living, laughing, loving, and learning. 

Under “farm, garden work,” I put “NO SHORTS” because wearing shorts while gardening is never a good idea, but I made exceptions when the weather is unnecessarily aggressive. 

summer mood board

execution

With this map, I slowly added items from various categories and tested various combinations using the images in my mood board as a guide. This summer, I went camping in the mountains, spent three days in the Bay Area for a concert, flew to Seattle for work, and spent the rest of my time shuffling my child’s summer activities, visiting friends in Sacramento, local summer activities, and river trips. I quickly found my groove dressing for my trips but struggled with what to wear when I wasn’t traveling. Some outfits were hits, and others failed, and I learned more about my wardrobe needs.

Grass Valley/Nevada City is a small mining town with a highly casual Western dress code. Straw hats are standard, and so are Teva sandals in the summer. The clothing stores cater to the Burning Man crowd, and you will see a lot of Harem Pants. Until 2020, most people who lived in Grass Valley were retired. The town is trying to meet the needs of its younger members by keeping the cafes and restaurants open longer, and we have a Target!