GQ ranked the 40 worst dressed cities in America and Boston came out on top. Or on the bottom, depending on how you look at it. At first I was surprised by this ranking, thinking of the well-dressed in Cambridge, as well as the professionals in the Financial District. But then I started looking around, even in my own design studio, at some of the atrocious outfits people had on. I guess it comes down to Boston being a liberal city and people feeling the need to express themselves in the way dress. Whatever works for them, I suppose. According to the GQ article, not even the Boston preppies are dressing in a stylish way--boat shoes with socks: horrible! Here's the excerpt on the city of Boston's fashion sense:
"Boston is like America's Bad-Taste Storm Sewer: all the worst fashion ideas from across the country flow there, stagnate, and putrefy. To be fair, it's hard to be a fashion capital when half of your population is made up of undergraduate hoodie monsters, including those unfortunate coeds who don't realize that leggings-as-pants were supposed to be paired with tops large enough to conceal their cameltoes. Yet when they graduate, they can wear their Uggs and still fit in at the country's largest frat party on Lansdowne behind Fenway, where they can take breaks between body shots to admire just how long boot-cut jeans can stay in style in one place. And any classy lady from Beantown is bound to be impressed by formal sportswear. "But Boston is the epicenter of prep style!," you say? That's true, but it's with a little extra that ends up ruining everything: Khakis!-with pleats. Boat shoes!-with socks. Knit ties!-actually, no one in Boston seems to have ever seen one of these. For the more proletarian-minded, there are the modest little burgs of Cambridge and Somerville, where everyone dresses like the proprietor of his or her very own meth lab. If you wonder how a people can live like this, well, it's Jurassic Park for fashion troglodytes: life finds a way." -John B. Thompson
Not so surprising to me is that Boston got voted America's least friendly city. I know several people who have given opposing fans wrong directions to Fenway Park. I thought New York City would be the least friendly, but I guess not. Boston has a blue-collar feel to it so many of its residents grew up tough. They don't take crap from other people. The survey was done by two psychologists who had Americans rate "character traits." You can see an article on the survey, with Mayor Menino's reaction here.
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