The art of dressing for the season (not the weather)
Rules of dressing in Spain 101
Living abroad long term there are obvious cultural differences you learn quite quickly, but on the flip side, there are other nuanced cultural differences that reveal themselves little by little. I find myself still uncovering such new learnings even 10 years later. It’s part of what I love about my life here. These deeper awarenesses not only shed a light on the culture, but actually provide an unexpected opportunity for more self-understanding and self-awareness.
What I was reflecting on this week is one of the more obvious lessons I learned my first year living here: the rules of dressing in Spain. I come from an area in the US where there are no rules when it comes to dressing. You can wear a beanie in summer and flip flops on a rainy day and no one is going to look at you funny. And truthfully I never thought twice about this prior to living in Sevilla. I wasn’t even aware of it. People dressed how they dressed.
That was until one fateful, unusually warm 27 degree (75 degrees for my Fahrenheit people) day in February when I decided to wear cropped pants and loafers (no socks) to work. I remember waking up that morning, checking the weather, and excitedly thinking to myself, “nice weather today!” and decided to swap out my usual winter attire for a lighter spring look. No need for socks on a warm, sunny day!
Little did I know what awaited me in the teacher’s lounge that day during recreo (recess break). Recreo was the moment all teachers gathered together in the lounge to make coffee and take a quick break from the chaos that was teaching high schoolers. As I made my coffee I hear a group of teachers to my right expressing utter surprise at my shoes and “exposed ankles” in February.
I look up (they weren’t being quiet about their observations) in confusion, and feel obligated to defend myself “pero si hace 27 grados hoy (it’s 75 degrees today!)”
“Pero si es FEBRERO!” one of the teachers responded, with incredulous amusement.
And in that exact moment, my friends, is when I learned that Spaniards dress for the season, not for the temperature. February is still considered “winter” so walking around sans socks with exposed ankles and cutoff pants is considered cultural blasphemy, no matter how great the temperature is outside.
Over time I learned that many Spaniards partake twice yearly in a “cambio de armario” which is where they literally change their closet to winter clothes in winter, and to summer clothes in summer. Therefore even when the weather is nice in winter, the idea is you don’t even have access to the warm weather clothes because you’re on your “winter wardrobe” rotation. This biannual ritual usually occurs in March and November in Sevilla and contributes to the binary belief that dressing must correspond to the season and not the actual temperature outside. If there’s an unusually warm day in January, it’s easy to spot who the tourists are in town. They’re sporting sandals, shorts, and a short-sleeved shirt in a sea of Spaniards dressed for the winter despite the sunny day.
This is one of the many cultural differences I’ve come to fully embrace, adore, and adopt myself. I love that there’s a guidebook to dressing. It is a manifestation of the tacit cultural understanding “this is how you should dress”.
