Wear Something Gaudy Day

What the day is

Wear Something Gaudy Day is observed on October 17. The instruction is to wear something loud, clashing, oversized or otherwise indefensible, and to do it in public rather than at home.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented.

The word is more interesting than the day. Gaudy traces back through Middle English to Latin gaudium, joy, and gaudere, to rejoice. It originally attached to ornament and display without much judgment, and only later curdled into an insult meaning showy and cheap. The disapproval is a later addition to a word that started out celebratory.

That shift is itself a piece of social history. Sumptuary laws across medieval and early modern Europe restricted who could wear which colors, fabrics and ornaments, reserving the brightest dyes for the highest ranks, because vivid color was expensive and therefore a claim to status. When synthetic dyes arrived in the nineteenth century and bright color became cheap, taste moved decisively toward restraint. Understatement became the marker of refinement precisely at the moment display stopped being exclusive.

Which is to say: the distinction between elegant and gaudy has always been partly about who can afford what, and the confidence to ignore it is its own kind of style.

How to take part

• Commit properly. A subtle nod to gaudiness misses the point entirely.
• Raid the back of the wardrobe first. Most people own something they bought in a moment of optimism and have never worn.
• Try a charity shop. This is the one day where the most improbable rail is the right rail.
• Clash deliberately: pattern on pattern, and colors that argue.
• Wear it somewhere that matters, like the office, rather than only to the shops.
• Take a photograph. You will not do this again for a year.