050/ What I'm Wearing: August 2023
Navigating socio-cultural dressing norms in real time from Korea to Japan and back to Toronto.
What I’m Wearing is a series where I share all of the outfits I’ve worn over a given week (or two), along with links, styling notes and related thoughts. If you see an outfit you like on my Instagram, you’ll find it here.
Back in March, prompted by a comment my son made while we were on vacation in Guadeloupe, I wrote a piece about navigating socio-cultural dressing norms. Sitting down to the write this newsletter, I realized that everything I wrote back then played out in real time over my six weeks in Korea and Japan (and back home to Toronto again).
As social beings, we live in societies with explicit and implicit norms which — whether we’re conscious of it or not — guide our behaviours, including what we decide to wear every day. These codes develop to help society run smoothly, giving everyone a baseline of what is expected of them and what to expect from others. The tricky thing with these codes is that they change, across neighbourhoods and national lines, and also cultural and religious ones.
Having been to Korea many times in my life (and once before to Japan), I thought I had the codes nailed down. Now, that wasn’t always the case; for years I actively rebelled against the prevailing norms with the brashness and confidence of youth (i.e. I knew nothing about life at that point lol), both in how I dressed and other behaviours. But, over the years, I’ve come to comfortable balance of feeling good about how I dress in Korea and what the norms are.
In my Packing Primer, to the question, “Are there any cultural norms I want to be mindful of?” — I knew that bare-chested, bare-shouldered, braless, backless is not common, and that silhouettes generally sit away from the body. I was fine not packing some of my more baring or fitted tops.
What I had not remembered (I think because it’s been 18 years since I visited Asia in the summer) was that bottoms tended towards the longer side for the majority of women in Korea, and then the vast majority in Japan (scroll through these street style snaps to get an idea — also striking: shorts were fairly common on men). Unlike tops, I hadn’t packed for this.
For the first couple of weeks, I wore my shorts and my low-ish cut nylon Zara dress, and then something funny happened. I kept leaning more and more towards the few longer skirts/dresses that I had. By the time I had gotten to Japan four weeks later, I had purchased three longer bottoms and was wearing them in rotation for the rest of the trip (photos below); the low-ish cut Zara dress didn’t come out at all.
Why was this happening?
In my piece about socio-cultural dressing norms, I wrote about the tension between wanting to stand out and our need to belong, and concluded that the decision to abide by norms may come down to a (sub)conscious risk assessment. Do I feel safe — physically and socially — to dress outside the usual?
For the most part, in environments I am familiar with, I mentally note the dress code — such as the appropriate level of formality or how trendy people dress — and take it into account when getting dressed. Sometimes I decide to wear something because I’m feeling the vibe but I know it will be an outlier. In doing so, I understand that by choosing to stand out rather than blend in, I am opening myself up to judgement (whether positive or negative). There may be times where I don’t think that risk is worth it, and others when I’ve frankly got no f*cks to give.
When I’m in an environment I’m unfamiliar with, including when I travel, I’m much more likely to dress within what I understand the norms to be. I think this is because I don’t have enough information to assess whether I can push the envelope without causing great offence, or even — in some cases, it’s important to acknowledge — compromising my physical safety. (Another vain reason is that I would loathe to be labelled a culturally insensitive philistine. The horror!)
It was low-risk for me to wear shorts in Japan, but I guess because I was still unfamiliar with the culture and getting the lay of the land, I wanted to stay on the safe side and not stand out.
Japan
The result was I had a thick layer of sticky sweat on me at all times. On this day I gave up and tucked my pant hems into my waistband, and the breeze on my bare legs felt so good! Also, the resulting “shorts” were kinda cute.
I picked up these two wash-in-the-sink-and-wear sets while grocery shopping in Korea. They served me well.
However, at the pool, onsen and the four days we were at the beach, I wore these Donni shorts everyday. They’ve been my unexpected hero piece of the season!
Home Sweet Home
I come back to Toronto, and an interesting thing happens. I want to be clear here that this is not a value judgment, just my observations.
After six weeks of getting used to seeing these longer, roomier silhouettes and seeing nary the outline of a breast, waist, butt or thigh, I was struck by the difference in how we dress here in Toronto vs. Korea/Japan: a lot of athleisure and leggings, clothes fitted through the whole body, bare arms, chests, shoulders, and short shorts. On the street, I repeatedly did double-takes as one does when seeing something unusual. Yes, unusual. In other words, in those six weeks, my mind had adjusted to the dressing norms of Asia.
The day after I landed, I went to a pool party, and although this felt “bare”, it was appropriate for the event. But as you can see from my outfits for the last two weeks, I chose outfits with more coverage as I was adjusting back to how I would usually dress at home in the summer.
Now that it’s been almost three weeks, I’m no longer doing double takes. But I am curious to see if anything I’ve picked up over the summer will weave its way into my aesthetic over the long-term. Time will tell…!
Love and gratitude as we say good-bye to summer 2023 (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway),
Irene
I have loved all of your posts re: your trip to Korea and Japan, and this was just as interesting as the previous ones. It's fascinating how our environment and the people around us nudge us in a certain direction with our style. As usual, I love everything you wear!
It was a pleasure to read this newsletter! I'll be reading the other one you mentioned here once I am on a work break. Social norms are so interesting. I enjoyed how you said you had to readjust once back to Toronto, it reminded of the month and a half I spent in Korea and Japan where I found everyone so polite - though Japanese and Korean express politeness very differently in my opinion. Once I was back in Europe, living between Italy and France at the time, I was appalled by the impoliteness. Things I'd consider annoying, but normal, had become 'extremely annoying,' and not normal after that trip. It took me a while to get back to the usual rudeness😂.
But one thing I kept from that trip is dressing roomier, and going for the longer hems for dresses. I buy more often than not jacket one or two sizes bigger to roll the sleeves, and play with proportions. One thing I also learn from that trip is the art of layering.