Q: Why is it supposed to be in poor taste to wear a blouse/sweater/shirt/jacket that's darker than your slacks/skirt? Looks OK to me.

A: You're right. Fashion advisers tend to warn against it for (I suspect) three reasons:

1. Women typically have wider hips than shoulders, and fashion advisers typically want to "correct" this disproportion. A white blouse and a black skirt evens it out, while a black blouse and a white skirt exaggerates the difference.

2. The light suit with dark shirt, like the dark shirt with lighter tie, still has a Godfather association for some people -- i.e., not nice. (It has a cool/hip association for other people, but that's a different story.)

3. Go back a hundred or so years and clean linen was a major status signifier, because only people who didn't get dirty and had laundresses on staff could afford to wear white shirts -- so dark shirts got to be low-class.

Interesting how bits of sociology like this survive in what we think of as "taste." Reminds me of my friend Charlie who, back in the 1960s, somewhere between his fancy New England boarding school and Yale, spent a summer working on a ranch out west. Saturday night, the guys in the bunkhouse were dressing up for the local dance. Charlie put on what he'd wear at home to relax in after a long week of wearing a coat and tie to class: his favorite blue chambray workshirt and faded jeans. To the wranglers, who actually worked in workshirts and jeans, this looked a major fashion blunder. They advised him that good taste required new jeans and a fancy shirt.

Patricia McLaughlin is a nationally syndicated fashion columnist.
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