We begin the year promising ourselves to be nicer, smarter and slimmer. By Labor Day Weekend we can see the results, plain as a selfie. If you spent the summer cooped up inside, or swathed shyly in a burqa of terrycloth, there’s still time to swallow your pride, fill a cooler and hit the great outdoors with the masses.
This does not overlap entirely with the first Monday in September’s annual celebration of workers and their achievements. Labor Day was born at a time when the average American worker toiled 12 hours a day, seven days a week to live in a Bowery-style hovel.
The first Labor Day parade was in New York City on September 5, 1882, when over 10,000 workers marched from City Hall to Union Square. They carried on to 42nd Street and picnicked with their families in Wendel’s Elm Park. 12 years later Congress made Labor Day a national holiday in the wake of the rioting over the Pullman railcar boycott in Chicago.
Union picnics and parades are still a significant thread of the partying on Labor Day. (The New York City Central Labor Council is not organizing its usual parade in 2013.) But for everyone except service industry workers, it’s a summer day off before school and the serious business of living resume. Popular choices include a final outdoor swim, a family barbeque, and the old laptop-on-the-roof routine.
David Chien has spent 12 years leading bus tours of New York City with Gray Line New York and CitySights NY. “I see a lot of New Yorkers heading out of town, but after July 4th it’s the busiest weekends of the year for visitors from places like Boston, Philadelphia and DC,” says the Marketing Manager of CitySights NY.
“People can hop on and off our buses, and the popular spots are the Brooklyn Bridge, the High Line and the reservoir in Central Park.”
It’s also a good time to show off your look. But New Yorkers have no truck with that old chestnut “Don’t wear white after Labor Day.” Seersucker, white linen suits, English cricket drag…Some consider them sacred rites of summer.
“Maybe people observe it in other places,” says Marilyn Kirschner, fashion watcher and editor-in-chief of The Look Online . “But not here. In New York white is year round. Black and white was the look on the runways last season, black over white, or stripes.”
It might be safer to not wear white for a week after Labor Day, unless you want to invite comments from persnickety traditionalists. But after that, anything goes.
Around Kirschner’s apartment near Ground Zero she sees a lot of tourists. “They’ve picked up the striped Breton shirt and the straw hat this summer.”
There are other fashions that will disappear soon after Labor Day. Such as:
• Dudes with sunglasses hanging from the back of their T-shirts
• Thin cotton jersey dresses with giant panels cut out of them
• Fluorescent orange sports bras as outerwear
• Men in red trousers
“I prefer to see women looking comfortable in simple things like espadrilles and ballet flats, rather than huge heels,” says Kirschner. “But I’ll be glad when the flip flops are gone. And tank tops on people who shouldn’t be wearing them. And as for walking barefoot around Manhattan…that’s unhealthy and dangerous, and just, no.”