- Joined
- Feb 11, 2007
- Messages
- 26,712
- Reaction score
- 9,856
If you want to be purely empirical about things, then of course, you will find there are no rules. You will always find counter-examples and changes in practice. However, if you are taking a purely empirical approach to interpreting classic men's dress, you are taking the wrong approach. You should be normative, in addition to empirical. Observe what has been done, try to understand why it was done, and then figure out what should be done. That's where rules come from.
+1
I am tired of posting on this and other fora that there are no rules, only time and place-specific conventions.
Item: I and every other middle-class Englishman that I knew grew up believing that a black full-brogue was acceptable conservative business dress footwear in the UK.
Apparently, we were all wrong, as were our fathers and grandfathers, from some of whom we inherited those black full brogues, because some Americans on the internet, reading books written by Americans or a German, said so.
It is not relevant that I have not bought a pair of black full brogues in twenty years.
If you want to be purely empirical about things, then of course, you will find there are no rules. You will always find counter-examples and changes in practice. However, if you are taking a purely empirical approach to interpreting classic men's dress, you are taking the wrong approach. You should be normative, in addition to empirical. Observe what has been done, try to understand why it was done, and then figure out what should be done. That's where rules come from.