How Do I Look or Does It Matter What You Wear in USA?

This is online community of international students studying in the USA.
The site where students help students to survive and thrive during their stay in America.

Olesya
Major: Communication
Status: editor

I love to write different articles and to visit theatre often. I believe that since I won FSA program I have two Motherlands: Ukraine and America.

How Do I Look or Does It Matter What You Wear in USA?
Olesya Kravchuk

(One beginning remark: this information is aplicable only to the small cities. They say Americans in small and big cities are rather different and thus dress differently as well.)
Most of the students who go to the USA for the first time ask the same question: “What clothes should I take with me?” Though all of them know American fashion from the movies we have, young people still do not know what to wear in the States.
Americans dress very informal. If they work not in a big corporation, they usually wear T-shirts and jeans even at work. Once I was astonished with the Dean of the faculty I studied at. One day he was sitting at the desk during the class and actually was showing his socks with the holes on them in front of our whole group. And the weirdest thing is that he was OK with that. Americans do not pay attention on what you wear or how do you look. They get to know you better and only then get their first impression from you.
In cold states (such as “my native” Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and some others), where winter lasts sometimes almost 9 months people dress kind of unusial. Even when it is cold outside, people wear summer shoes, T-shirts and shorts. And this is sometimes even without a jacket on. The point is that all the Americans have cars and they do not walk almost anywhere. In all the buildings there are pretty good heaters, so it is very warm (even hot) inside. Thus Americans do everything in an easy way: what for to wear all these boots and jackets if they just pop out their houses, jump in the cars and then do the same procedure with the work.

When European goes to a restaurant, he/she dresses nice. Of course, we want to look good! In America to go out to the bar or restaurant to eat is something as usual as for us is to eat dinner at our kitchen. Very rare you would find people dressed nice in American restaurants. I want to repeat again: people in the USA do not care how you are dressed.
But if you want to buy some really good fashionable clothing to use them at home – do that. It is very easy to shop in America especially when you find the sails. If you see the magic word SALE at the store – stop by and see what is going on there. Usually you can find very good deals on the sails among the biggest ammount of clothes ever.
If you are going to job interview – forget which was said above about dressing. Everything os the opposite! Usually the recruiters look at how you are dressed plus they listen to what you say. There are plenty of books written on what to wear on the job interview, so my advice would be to read some of them if you really want to get a good job. I hope this article would help those of you who were worrying about fashion in the USA.
For those of you who still need more information on how to dress in America – you can visit those web-sites:
http://www.usstyle.net - tells about different American fabrics http://www.bbc.co.uk/so/fashion/ - some fun stuff about fashion http://www.lycra.com – about Lycra fabrics

Return to the topics list

Highlights

Christine tells how to save money on international phone calls while calling home.
More...

Announcements

Get Internship in PR, Marketing, Management, Writing and Editing!
More...


Our student network includes: US College Prorgams and Degrees College Student Fun, Online Education, International Students