What You Like to Wear on Weekends Changes

Unless you work in the creative work force or you are retired, you have to dress within certain norms of an employer-approved dress code. Even when you have to wear a uniform, you enjoy the freedom to turn fashion into style and to pick your own personal look in your time off. In this post, I show you how weekend fashion style changed over time.

 

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Today Weekend Style Means Casual for Professionals

When your work dress code is corporate style you have to dress-up all week. When you are lucky, there is a Casual Friday culture. Nevertheless, whatever you wear it has to stay within the framework of the HR approved dress code. Thus, the weekend means dress-down or casual for many corporate employees. Employees having to wear a uniform or business casual style feel similar.

We love the athleisure looks for comfort in summer. In winter, we create a lovely leggings look with a cozy sweater outfit for watching TV, reading a book or browsing fashion on social media.

We also spend time with our family and friends. Of course, what we wear depends on the plans and the weather. You dress for a spa weekend differently than you dress for attending a sports event.

 

 

 

My Favorite Outfits to Wear in my Spare Time

Of course, the outfits depend on what I am doing. Gardening in Alaska asks for jeans and kuspuk. Shopping for a casual look when it is the grocery store. A floral dress is perfect for the Farmers Market. My husband and I are passionate dancer. Thus, dance garments are It for us.

 

 

In the 1960s and 1970s Weekend Meant Sunday’s Best

As a child, I never thought about wearing the same every Sundays. On Sunday’s, I was supposed to wear my Sunday’s Best. This means I had a winter dress and a summer dress that I wore every Sunday. I recall a pink white polka dot dress with pink jacket from first grade, a white sheath with embellishment over the chest that I wore in summer in second and third grade on Sundays. In winter, I had a brown velvet dress. In fourth grade, I got a rust lean jersey dress with stripes and a club sign application on the chest.

On Saturdays, I was so fortunate to have to go to school. It meant I was allowed to wear what I wanted as long as I obeyed to my mom’s fashion rules. I really disliked when the school board turned to one Saturday per month to being without school. It just meant another day with “Sunday dressing rules.” In plain English, I had to dress for whatever action plan my parents had.

 

Saturday Shopping and Other Family Activity Outfits

Action plans I hated were jogging, hiking, walks, bicycling, and car wash. I still don’t like any gym gear, or athletic attire that is meant actually to be worn for the purpose of exercise. However, I love leather joggers with polo and Keds for the weekend, or the athleisure trend may be because they are making fun of the original? Maybe not.

I loved dressing for going shopping in Duisburg, Krefeld (both in Germany) or Venlo (The Netherlands). Even if it was just grocery shopping. I loved the big department stores, the neon lights, the decoration, the outdoor markets and looking at the store windows as well as observing what people wore.

 

Casual Weekend Outfits of My Childhood

I also loved collecting potatoes from the fields after the harvest or collecting coal from the mining dump. We wore old clothes, i.e. clothes that were distressed, ripped or otherwise in bad shape. I liked the distressed look and that I could mix prints/pattern. My mom’s rule was just one print or pattern per outfit. However, when the call was for these activities, the rule was just that it had to be old clothes, too old to be worn to school.

Furthermore, we wore rubber rainboots with these outfits, no matter what the weather was like. Why? There was a lot of dust and sand in that mining waste dump and the fields were pretty sandy.

You wouldn’t get the sand in your “shoes” wearing boots. Real boots would have been too “expensive” to wear on the dump or in the fields.

I loved the fresh potatoes my mom would fry after we came home. Therefore, I was great at collecting small potatoes because  she would fry small ones.  I didn’t like cooked potatoes except those my granny had cooked.

 

Coal Collection vs. Science Interests

I had no ambitions to be the best coal collector of us kids who would find the biggest piece of coal or collect the most. On the contrary, I was more a burden than a help. Yes, I participated in the activity and threw the one or the other piece of coal into the wheelbarrow. But actually, doing so was only a side part of another goal. My interest was on the imprints of ancient plants in the rock pieces. When looking for them you had to dig thru the dirt. While my sibling lifted dirt to find the coal, I lifted it to find imprints. Thus, when I had to lift a piece of coal, it went into the wheelbarrow. Every rock would be turned around and hit with another stone to see whether I could split it to find an imprint. You see that I spent the time on searching for imprints rather than searching for left-over coal.

 

What Happened to My Collection

When the wheelbarrow was full, I had endless discussions with my father about how many of my finds I could take home. The dump was about 3 miles from my parents’ house. I had to either carry them myself or put them on the wheelbarrow. However, my Dad’s interest was, of course, to put as many coal on the wheelbarrow as possible. It was the time of and after the oil crisis. Heating the house as cheap as possible was a legitimate goal.

Over time, I had curated a great collection or ancient imprints. One day, when I came back from college, all my rock vegetation imprints were gone. My mom had donated them to her school. I was pretty upset back then. Today, I think she did a good thing. This way a lot of students get to see them.

 

What Did People Wear on the Weekend in the 1980s?

Recall the sweat pants and sweater outfits couples wore in partner look when shopping for groceries on Saturday mornings? In the early to mid 1980s, I wore jeans, sweater, sunglasses, a thermal jacket, a bucket hat and a parachute. When the weather was nice, you could find me on the airstrip pushing gliders between soaring the sky. Towards the late 1980s, graduate school sucked up a lot of time. Thus, my looks were more along the lines of picnic outfits.

 

How Did People Dress Up in the 1990s?

In Germany, hiking outfits were It as well as surfing. Even when not being in the mountains or on the beach, these youth groups wore these uniforms day-in-day out.  In the 1990s, my husband and I worked in different towns. Since we only saw each other at the end of the week, our looks were date night, dancing, travel or shopping outfits. The look in the example photo features an all black outfit in the 90s uniform style, but with contemporary pieces.

 

 

The 21st Century Saturday Night Fever – Dance Outfits

My husband and I are passionate ballroom dancers. When we go out for dancing I like to wear jeans with a top when the dance place is a country and western style place. It is not like dressing for a military ball. When we go out for milongas or Latin I prefer a flapper type dress. In other words, what to wear when going out for dancing depends on the venue. The look must allow to dance to the type of music played, the vibe of the music and match the dress-code of the place itself.

 

Best dance outfits for a Western Bar

Here is my Saturday nite outfit example for dancing at a Western bar: Rolled up washed jeans, studded heels, a sequin stripe top, and a faux fur bomber. Another reason to wear jeans for West Coast swing dancing is that we do some aerials and lifts. Thus, a skirt or dress is not a suitable choice unless you wear shorts underneath.

 

An alternative is a retro fit-and-flare dress like the next look. To stay with the retro-theme opaque tights are a great choice. Moreover, you won’t have a problem with aerials.

 

Salsa cruise and tequila tasting

The salsa cruise on the Chena River is an annual event in Fairbanks and a “go to” for everyone in the dancing community. The chairs are removed from the riverboat to make place for dancing. DJ atm  plays salsa for people to dance.

 

River Dance Cruises on Deck of the Tanana Chief …

… mean you are dinner for the the mosquitoes. That’s why a cocktail dress is not your best option. Well, the riverboat is a tourist boat meaning that it has outside decks. There are tons of mosquitoes during a late evening cruise. It always seems like the mosquitoes come out at 7pm. The top with sequins makes the outfit event appropriate. The jeans and bomber leather jacket are good protection from the “blood suckers”.

 

Further Weekend Style Outfit Ideas

 

 

 

What Bloggers Wear on the Weekend

Now that we went thru my weekend style and how it changed from the 1960s to the 2020s, let’s see what my blogging friends are wearing in the 2020s.

 

 

Photos of me: G. Kramm

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