Notre Dame

Are we a nation of slobs?

Chances are, Linda Przybyszewski thinks you're a slob.
Yes, you. All of you.

Przybyszewski, an associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, hates most fashion staples these days: flip-flops, shorts, black-colored clothing and schlocky T-shirts, to name a few. Mass-produced, cheaply made clothes that dominate most retail stores, she says, are boring and ill-fitting.

She thinks Americans dress so poorly these days that she's writing a book about it: Nation of Slobs: How Americans Learned -- and Forgot -- How to Dress. And last week, she started teaching a new course at Notre Dame about Americans' poor dress habits.

A legal scholar who has also written a book about a 19th century Supreme Court justice, she says she isn't looking for a return to the Victorian Age. But since the 1960s, she says, Americans' dress has become far too informal and far too simple, besides lacking in creativity.

"We began this long downward slide,'' she says of the change in dress habits over the last century. "It's as though people couldn't be bothered to think at all about what they wear."

Przybyszewski's reference point is a collection of 300 books, dating to 1918, written as textbooks for home economics courses, that she has amassed over the years. They were guides to clothing but also guides to sewing, design, grooming and budgeting -- essentially books about the "art of life,'' she says.

Przybyszewski doesn't think dressing up means dressing slutty, which she says too many women do today. She attributes that trend to the "red carpet'' effect, where movie stars before the Oscars try to attract photographers' attention by wearing strapless, revealing gowns that are inappropriate for most occasions ("I was rather appalled to see an off-the-shoulder communion dress in a suburban Chicago church this summer'').

As for guys, "most of my students are wearing T-shirts and shorts or T-shirts and jeans," she says. "In colleges in the 1950s, young men wore ties and sport coats.''

And should they really wear flip-flops? "Men's bare toes, I don't find very attractive. I don't know why I should have to look at them,'' she says.

One of Przybyszewski's assignments is to require her students to try harder by wearing the typical dress from the 1950s, such as tweed jackets and ties for men and poodle skirts and twinsets for women.

Despite her tastes, she says, dressing nice doesn't mean dressing expensively. She sews her own clothes, searching out creative, vintage patterns, and encourages others to learn. She also says some of the nicest clothes can be found in thrift shops.

Why obsess over what people wear?

"I hope I might be able to push people in the direction to take more care with dress and add a little more care with dress,'' she says. Chances are, Linda Przybyszewski thinks you're a slob. Yes, you. All of you. ... more

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