Growing up, my sister and I lived in places where dressing nice was neither necessary nor typical. When we moved back to Minnesota after college, where people dress moderately year-round unless you’re going to a wedding or out on the town, I didn’t realize how much regional dressing cultures could differ. It wasn’t until I joined my sister on her bachelorette party that I fully understood how vast those differences could be.
My sister lives in Chicago now (has for roughly eight years), and she wanted to do something fun and unique for her bachelorette party instead of Vegas like many of her friends. She picked three other cities we could each spend a weekend in—one weekend covered lots of bars due to holiday scheduling—and bar-hop our way through regional nightlife culture. At the time I thought she was elitist.
She was kind of right. Our first city was Nashville.
I packed “one of my cute going-out outfits”—skinny jeans I loved, a cute blouse I’d picked up from Madewell recently, and my favorite ankle boots—and was feeling myself until we walked into our first honky-tonk.
Y’all. Holy. Cow.
Every woman inside was dressed to kill…er, to country-upon Broadway. We’re talking teased hair (ACTUAL TEASED HAIR), full glam make up that somehow both looked natural and like it was photoshopped for a magazine cover, statement blouse jewelry perfectly completing every outfit. Dresses that fit like they were painted on, boots that were probably over $300, dangly earrings that sparkled in the perfect way.
I wanted to crawl into my suitcase and disappear. “What’s wrong with your sister?” laughed my sister’s friend Kate, who’d lived in Nashville for the past three years as she watched me gaping at the display around us. “She didn’t dress for Nashville, did she?” Kate giggled. She wasn’t mocking my sister, just commiserating–this was apparently normal. “Nashville women dress to kill when they go out. It’s a thing.
Hours in the bathroom looking glamorous is just part of the fun.” Who knew? As we walked around that night, I watched groups of women compliment each others’ outfits, snap pictures together, and genuinely celebrate each other dressing up. It was like someone put codename fabulous on steroids and set them loose in Nashville nightclubs.
There was community and camaraderie in women taking the time to look and feel amazing, something I’d never really experienced. In Minnesota, if you’re too dressed up to go to a casual downtown bar you might get some side-eye—but in Nashville it was like not dressing up at all was insulting to the business. It took me about five seconds of walking around Atlanta the next night to realize I didn’t learn damn thing from my Nashville pun lesson.
Atlanta style was wild. Like, completely unprecedented crazy. Nashville had rules and everyone wore them beautifully, but Atlanta seemed to throw every femme-item-in-the-store at themselves and rock it.
Women paired vintage band shirts with high-end skirts, expertly-styled natural hair I’d never seen before, creative makeup looks that looked like actual paintings, earrings so large they threatened to pull my eyes out of their sockets. I dressed like I was in Nashville when I was actually in Atlanta, received similar judgments to my airs around the girls when we pulled into our first Atlanta club (“Girl, you HAVE to dress for Atlanta…”), and instantly regretted wearing the dress I borrowed from Kate because literally every woman there out-fancy’d me. My sister’s friend Maya, who grew up in Cleveland and moved to Atlanta after college four years prior, caught my flabbergasted expression when we sat down for brunch that morning. “You literally cannot look bored in Atlanta,” Maya said, setting down a syrup-drenched pancake. “It’s dress however you want, but make sure it looks like you thought about it at least a little.
Break every rule, but in the coolest way possible. BORING is the only crime here.” New Orleans completely messed me up. As someone who considers putting on deodorant “getting dressed,” New Orleans culture felt like they spent hours thinking about how little they appeared to try.
Women wandered the streets looking put-together and almost ethereally cute; billowy shirts that looked expensive but were probably not, dangly earrings that looked sentimental rather than expensive, hair perfectly tousled in a way that definitely took you all morning. “Like you’re lounging at home in sweatpants looks,” Sarah, one of Sarah’s friends explained when we sat down for coffee one morning and she offered to give us a tour of the city. “But also like you respect the culture and vibe of New Orleans. Don’t wanna look like a tourist, but also don’t wanna look like you forgot to care where you are.” Everywhere we went that weekend, I felt like I was relearning what “dressing nice” meant. Back home in Minnesota, where the most glamorous thing I usually do is pickup kids from school, my mentality has always been completely utilitarian.
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Will this shirt hide spit up? Is it easy to throw in the wash? Can I bend over in these pants without flashing everyone?
While those are all still very important factors to what I wear on a daily basis (hello, sticky fingers and playground duty! ), I realized over those few days I’d been thinking about dressing nicely in such a small box. The Midwest has a style, I realized on that trip. So does every place we visited; they were just different from mine and from each other.
Nashville valued visible effort and glamour; showing up looked likes hours of prep work and selfies in the bathroom. Atlanta encouraged creativity and individuality; I felt underserved by my little Hot Topic phase back in high school. New Orleans was some sort of art project that I will never, ever understand but will forever admire from afar.
Hell, even Minnesota has it’s own style that I’d never noticed before. We wear what’s practical: boots for snow, layers for insane weather changes, durable clothes that can be stained and worn repeatedly. There’s something undeniably Midwestern about dressing in a way that’s put-together without being overly flashy, investing in timeless basics you’ll wear for decades, valuing comfort over drama.
I got back to Minnesota and started noticing the moms that hovered around my children’s school pickup. There’s definitely a Minnesota mom uniform—well fitted jeans or leggings, comfy-but-classic sneakers/ankle boots, cardigans or fleeces, small diamond or pearl earrings, nude lipstick. It’s not boring (not like I would have previously thought) it’s just what works for our weather and our values.
But more than that, I realized I’d been using “I have kids” and “it needs to be practical” as excuses to not think about what I was wearing at all. There’s a difference between dressing for how you live and throwing on trash every day. I started wearing fun earrings (kids can ruin your shirt but they’re not climbing on your face), experimenting with skinny jeans vs bootcut vs flare vs Jegging-what-the-heck are jeggings?? ?, actually thinking about what color something is before I threw it in my laundry basket and wore it back out.
Realizing how different regions dress versus how I was used to made me appreciate my own style more, too. When we drove out to see my in-laws in Phoenix last summer (pre pandemic obvi), I packed way differently than I would’ve thought ten years ago. You dress differently in the desert than you do in the Midwest—lighter colors, lighter fabrics, less polish.
I felt cooler knowing I had some thought and care behind what I was throwing in my suitcase to cover my body for a week, not just chucking shit at a Rubbermaid container until it shut. I’ve even noticed when I travel to soccer tournaments or visit old college friends how different regions dress versus what I’m used to. Denver had an unexpectedly trendy vibe during our tournament—again, at difference from the Midwest—Portland was *basically* Portland.
No places were wrong for dressing how they wanted, they were just visibly and historically different.
That weekend taught me to pay attention to regional dressing culture. It also taught me that just because I live in an adult Target-shirt-and-J Crew-slacks kind of town doesn’t mean I can’t dress with more intention myself.
Knowing how to dress for Minneapolis culture and weather is just as important as knowing how to throw on a lace top and jeans without looking too pantsuit-y in Nashville. I look at my closet differently now. Sure, I dress for function first like I always have.
But I also try to dress with purpose. Am I going to work? Distracting my kids at the zoo?
Meeting friends for after-work drinks? I ask myself where I’m “going” when I get dressed now, because even if that destination is Target with my kids, I want to wear clothes that make me feel like I belong there. Like I matter.
Like I’m part of a community that dresses how it wants to dress and that’s perfectly acceptable.
