I support this particular dress code, and think it would make the evening feel more unified in intent, but I want to push back slightly on the reasoning.
My overriding message is that a norm beats no norm, regardless of what that norm may be.
Many people are busy, and not all people are wealthy, and I don’t think all fashion norms would be good. For instance, if everyone had to buy a relatively expensive tuxedo (as has been the norm in other events I’ve been to in the world, such as some classical music concerts and some Oxford events), this would I think be net costly and not worth it.
I have grown slightly more willing to dress up for events in recent times, I’m not quite sure why but probably in part because I’m a little wealthier than I was before, and in part because more of my social circle is dressing nicely. But I want to bring up that it’s good to avoiding runaway signaling, where each year people add slightly more expectations and requirements for signaling that you respect the in-group (“I think this year everyone should wear a glittery lightcone pendant and a hat with a special anti-death symbol on it”) to the point where the dress code is overly expensive and time-costly.
I suggest the heuristic that it is good for a dress code to ideally never require buying new cloths to meet it, if you don’t want to.
And I think this dress code works well because my best guess is the vast majority of people have black clothes.
Yeah that’s super reasonable! Not hard at all to imagine some norms that could be worse than no norm. Would have been better stated “some ‘reasonable’ norm beats no norm”, with hopes that the community could decide what norms are or aren’t “reasonable”
I support this particular dress code, and think it would make the evening feel more unified in intent, but I want to push back slightly on the reasoning.
Many people are busy, and not all people are wealthy, and I don’t think all fashion norms would be good. For instance, if everyone had to buy a relatively expensive tuxedo (as has been the norm in other events I’ve been to in the world, such as some classical music concerts and some Oxford events), this would I think be net costly and not worth it.
I have grown slightly more willing to dress up for events in recent times, I’m not quite sure why but probably in part because I’m a little wealthier than I was before, and in part because more of my social circle is dressing nicely. But I want to bring up that it’s good to avoiding runaway signaling, where each year people add slightly more expectations and requirements for signaling that you respect the in-group (“I think this year everyone should wear a glittery lightcone pendant and a hat with a special anti-death symbol on it”) to the point where the dress code is overly expensive and time-costly.
I suggest the heuristic that it is good for a dress code to ideally never require buying new cloths to meet it, if you don’t want to.
And I think this dress code works well because my best guess is the vast majority of people have black clothes.
Yeah that’s super reasonable! Not hard at all to imagine some norms that could be worse than no norm. Would have been better stated “some ‘reasonable’ norm beats no norm”, with hopes that the community could decide what norms are or aren’t “reasonable”