This being the week after Labor Day, I am aware that the principal dress code, or lack of one, on most people’s minds has to do with whether it is really appropriate for a 14-year-old to head off for the first day of school with magenta hair, pierced eyebrows, shredded jeans and a safety pin through her nose. But that would actually be a close question compared with some of the open-and-shut cases that arise from airborne travel, especially in summer. I ask myself: Do these people know what they look like? Do they care? The answer to both questions is, clearly, no, which is why action is going to be required sooner or later. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a snob thing. We are not talking high fashion here. We’re not even talking low fashion. Half the time we’re not even talking clothes.
It is true that people my age spend a lot of time romanticizing how things used to be and regretting how they have changed . . . and on and on. And it is also true that a good deal of what we say in these fits of indignation and nostalgia is either confused or factually wrong–things didn’t used to be that way. But on travel attire, trust us. People anxious about missing the plane didn’t used to call out to the family, as one must presume they now do, “Come on everybody, hurry up and get naked; we’ve got to leave for the airport in 15 minutes.” In fact, they actually used to get dressed up to travel, on the quaint theory, that it mattered what they looked like to the other travelers. And even when this custom bit the dust, there was a long period of time when they at least wore the same kinds of clothes they might wear to work. And then–the trend was gaining force– they would wear the kinds of clothes they might wear to mow the lawn in, or clean the leaves out of the gutters. That might not have been a look that would get you in Vanity Fair or GQ, but say this for it: it was still clothes. Only in the last few years has the principle finally been reached that you do not dress to travel at all; you undress.
It will be argued that given the new, fun intimacy of cabin design in the age of deregulation, which so far as I can tell, goes by a standard of one passenger per cubic foot of space, travelers are well within their rights to get comfortable and dress casually. But I would respond that the new up-close-and-personal seating arrangements on planes are precisely what make the ever-expanding vistas of flesh more oppressive. In any case, I certainly expect that under the dress code the Federal Aviation Agency will finally be forced to promulgate by about the year 2034, a number of articles will be, if not banned outright, at feast restricted to use by certain designated classes of travelers. Cutoffs, flip-flops and tank tops will, of course, be the first three items of apparel to go on the restricted list.
But what about dear, little scrawny 6-year-olds, you say? What about Nicolas Cage? What about Julia Roberts? I have given a great deal of thought to this problem–the innocent child, the gorgeous adult–and tried to work out some criteria for exceptions to the mandatory code. But I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with the American Civil Liberties Union on this one. You and I have both flown across the country, in the very close company of that 89-year-old woman in cutoffs and her 300-pound husband in a tank top (both shod in flip-flops, most probably). But the minute you get into distinctions based on age or weight, or, for that matter, a variety of depilatory issues I would rather not get into, you are into discrimination plain and simple, or at least it will be so said. So I say go for the outright ban on offending items of clothing, and establish some universal rules about what may or may not be exposed and exactly how much of it.
Naturally the authorities aren’t going to be able to do this all at once. For the purpose of maintaining civil peace the re will have to be a kind of gradual imposition of the new rules, just as it works in other regulations and legislation–at the end of five years, this; at the end of seven, that. It will be the same with the limitations on what will be considered card-on luggage. Only grand pianos will be banned in the first phase, for instance, uprights and spinets to come later. The drafters of the carry-on regulation might also end up considering sheer dimensional limitations, such as “Nothing whose width makes it impossible to be dragged down an ordinary aircraft aisle without risking serious head injury to seated passengers on both sides shall be permitted.” But these details, like the actual surface space of an individual required to be fully covered under the dress code, can be worked out.
As I foresee it, we departure-gate patrollers will be supplied with airline-issue togs for the offenders to put on if they wish to be allowed to make the journey, rather in the manner of headwaiters at hoity-toity restaurants who are able to offer neckties with previous borrowers’ soup stains on them to men who are tieless and cannot otherwise be admitted. I once was with a friend who insisted he had cracked that case and thus would be admitted to a pricey hotel dining room in the horrible Hawaiian shirt that was hanging out over his pants. It was in the days when people were just starting to get really guilty and self-conscious about American power and romantic about the Third World, and so when the maitre d’ stopped him. he said, looking baffled and hurt. “But this is my national dress”–and damned if we didn’t get in. I won’t be such a patsy as a patroller. No excuses. I see myself being fair but really stern. When they get rambunctious and defiant and out of control I’ll remain unmoved. I’ll say, “Calm down, Buster. Keep your shirt on.”
