Yes, You Can Wear White After Labor Day. Here's Why (2024)

If you grew up anything like me, each Easter you'd pull out a new pair of white Sunday shoes and wear them every week with your dresses, until Labor Day came. From then until the next Easter, it was dark shoes only. Decades later, though, you might be asking: What is that rule about no white after Labor Day, and when can you start wearing it again? Can you wear white after Labor Day in the South? Who started this "rule"? And is it still followed today? Here we answer all those questions and more in a primer on the white after Labor Day rule (and even how to break it), with quotes from fashion experts to back it all up.

Look around at movies and celebrities, and you'll see plenty of evidence of a rule broken (and also a rule followed). As you shop those Labor Day sales (there's so much discounted on Amazon for the holiday!) and partake in Labor Day activities like tailgating or taking a road trip, you can also start plotting out your wardrobe for those early fall, still-warm-but-you're-over-your-summer-clothes days with the white rule (or lack thereof) in mind.

What is the rule about no white after Labor Day?

An unwritten etiquette rule followed by many for years held that white garments and shoes were only worn in the summer, which officially came to its a close on Labor Day after the national holiday was established in 1894.

Who started the no white after Labor Day rule?

There is no one person or group who started the practice. Instead, there are a few historical explanations that started in the 1800s.

For one, wearing white was a way to stay cool in hot summer months. “Not only was there no air-conditioning, but people did not go around in T-shirts and halter tops. They wore what we would now consider fairly formal clothes,” Judith Martin, aka etiquette columnist Miss Manners, told TIME. “And white is of a lighter weight.”

White also became fashionable for well-to-do Americans on summer holiday, a contrast from darker hues worn by the working class in urban areas to befit their daily labor. "By the end of the 19th century, upper-class Americans escaped the summer heat of the city by retreating to the countryside or seaside, where white clothing remained free of the inevitable grime of the increasingly industrialized urban centers," Amanda Hallay, the fashion historian behind The Ultimate Fashion History, told Harper's Bazaar. "This was a sartorially social divide—only those who could afford to wear white could wear white. Not only did the wealthy summer in the far-cleaner countryside, but should their beautiful white dresses get dirty, they had servants to launder them."

Whatever the origins, by the mid-20th century no white after Labor Day had become a custom for polite society, and those aspiring upward mobility could, in part, earn their way in by following such rules.

Still, the rule found resistance in high fashion over the years it was followed. Starting in the 1920s, French fashion designer Coco Chanel wore white year-round as a permanent part of her wardrobe.

Do you still have to follow the no white after Labor Day rule?

The answer is NO. For most, the rule no longer applies, so you can style white in your outfits into fall and winter and then back into the spring. And the lack of rule applies everywhere, even the South. According to the Emily Post Institute, white can be worn 365 days a year now. What matters more today is fabric than color. Case in point: Marion Cotillard's mermaid-inspired cream dress she sported in 2008 for her Academy Award acceptance speech and the white silk chiffon Jason Wu gown Michelle Obama wore for her husband's first inaugural ball in 2009 in Washington, D.C.

How should you wear white after Labor Day then?

You can wear it however you like! “There are no rules," lifestyle expert and TV host Kathy Buccio told TODAY. "Yes, you can wear all the white in the world if you want.”

As temperatures cool, put away your white linen and spaghetti strap shirts but leave out other white staples to transition them into fall. Pair white sleeved shirts and blouses, white pants and denim, white dresses, white boots, and white sneakers with darker fall essentials and layers—think sweaters and pants and jackets and darker shoes, maybe even some animal print.

And then when it gets real cool outside, there’s winter white—think white knit and cable sweaters, cashmere sweaters, white sneakers, and white turtlenecks—that you can sport until temperatures warm up in the spring.