The Practicality of Uniformity

The uniform. It’s a staple of the service industry that exists to project order, belonging, and relative equality between its wearers. Your socioeconomic background, ethnicity, and other identifiers are a little less important when you step into a uniform. This applies to everyone, from police officers to hotel staff. Familiar uniforms range from those in private and public school systems to the jumpsuits plumbers wear. They’re how we identify someone’s occupation. However, they have also been co-opted by the fashion industry to be more than just a practical tool for performing a service. The uniform has turned into a fashion statement—designers use this concept to escape the anxiety that the industry they directly contribute to creates.

I first learned of the uniform as a fashion statement from an older student during my university days. She wore a black circle skirt, black top, and black shoes every single day. She explained that it was her uniform and her way of simplifying her wardrobe while I stared at her in befuddlement. I had picked out my colorful outfit the night before and thoroughly enjoyed getting dressed. To me, wearing a uniform by choice every day seemed suffocating. After talking to her, however, I learned that a uniform operates on many levels as both a practical wardrobe decision and as a way to combat fast fashion.

One of the most touted reasons for choosing to wear the same thing is to avoid the uneasiness associated with picking out an outfit every day. There have been one too many jokes about women complaining that they have nothing to wear when facing a closet full of clothes, and a uniform forces people to consider how their clothes will represent them. Adopting a uniform is also used as a tactic to shop sustainably. Some might simplify their wardrobe to a few staple pieces to mix and match because they no longer want to participate in how “textile production contributes more to climate change than international aviation and shipping combined.” By being a more conscious shopper and spending money on ethically made, sustainably sourced, and high-quality clothing, the average person not only feels better about their spending habits, but also feels like they are doing their part to help heal the environment. One would think that because a uniform is contrary to our typical spending habits, the designers of the brands contributing to the fashion industry would be directly opposed to the idea. But the uniform has evolved into a concept some of the most famous fashion designers have adopted, from Prabal Gurung and Vera Wang to the creative director of Balmain, Olivier Rousteing.

Rousteing limits his wardrobe to a black double-breasted blazer with gold buttons, a black T-shirt, and black slacks. He designs luxury wear for some of the most high-profile celebrities in the world. His brand contributes to the excessive shopping habits of women around the globe, which in turn contributes to fast fashion and other concerning trends in the industry. And yet, he restricts his own wardrobe to a few simple items.

Then there’s Victoria Beckham, who wears pantsuits all the time. That is her uniform. As someone not working in the service industry, she has the freedom to choose her uniform every day and to make it as stylish and comfortable as she wants. Her designs are luxury and expensive–her customers are certainly not wearing a uniform, otherwise she probably wouldn’t be making as much money as she does. But that’s luxury–you could argue that the average person probably doesn’t have a closet stocked with Gucci.

I have to throw in at least one contributor to fast fashion: Sophia Amoruso, founder of Girlboss and Nastygal, who rotates between four different jumpsuits for work, only switching it up with jewelry and makeup. The pressures of being a fashion icon can be mitigated, it seems, by just wearing the same thing every day. For a fashion designer, a uniform comes as a relief, which is an odd thing to think about. Fashion designers should not get the privilege of sidestepping the anxieties their own industry consistently creates. The contrast between what designers wear themselves versus what they put into the fashion industry and expect their customers to buy every day is an ironic one.

There is a reason why typical uniforms are mandated in the service industry and worn by blue-collar workers: they are the exact opposite of glamorous. They are meant to be practical, efficient, easy to clean, and cheap to produce. They are meant to hide individuality, suppress personal expression, and project uniformity and unity. By choosing to wear a uniform instead of channeling the excessive spending and consumer habits of their customers, designers have glamorized a simpler wardrobe. They have managed to avoid the pitfalls of their own industry, and yet, they wake up and design clothes for millions of women and men who decide that in order to be noticed, they must spend their paychecks chasing the third season (in the span of two months) of fall attire to hit the shelves.

If some of the most famous fashion designers such as Michael Kors, Karl Lagerfeld, and Jason Wu can decide that all-black outfits are the best way to dress, why do the average consumers not notice that this is an option? It is actually quite radical in today’s society for a consumer to decide that they will not participate in the trends our capitalist society puts forward. The onus is on the creators and propagators of the industry to take responsibility for the fashion consumption they contribute to, as well as on consumers to wake up and realize they are caught in a vicious cycle of spend, toss, and repeat. Perhaps we should be looking at the uniform not simply as a way blue-collar workers dress to go to work every day, but also as a challenge to designers: what would happen if we all decided that jeans and a white tee were all we need? What would happen to fashion then?

Artwork by Fatema Al Fardan