The Teva high-heel in black — perfect formal footwear for Seattle? (photo: Gray Ant/Teva)
Last week I attended the Seattle Opera’s production of Beethoven’s Fidelio. The singing was beautiful, of course, but that’s not what inspired this blog post. It was the clothing. The audience’s clothing.
Suffice it say that Tevas, jeans and polo shirts are still acceptable attire for a night at the opera in Seattle; not much has changed in the four years since Pam Sitt wrote this article on the subject in The Seattle Times.
It’s a long-standing complaint that Seattleites don’t care how they dress, don’t buy new clothes, and even take a perverse pride in their frumpiness — we’re into books here, not clothes.
But is it true? Do we really have no interest in clothes in Seattle? And can data help us find an answer?
Not sure, but I thought I’d give it a shot.
I devised a simple measure — an index — to gauge the fashion priorities of Seattleites in relation to people in other cities. I’ll call it the Shoppers Index.
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