Illustrative image: Generated with Google Gemini Flash Image 2.5 This morning I began my day after one of those rare occasions when I had enough sleep. Both the teenagers were at home, no one had to be at school early and the cats were fully in favour of more rest.
I was humming through my morning until I opened my cupboard door and wondered what I should wear.
For various logistical reasons I would have to leave the house in a suit. But what if the mood led me to wear a bright yellow and green shirt I’ve been wearing quite a bit recently?
If things had been different in the 92nd minute last night, it would have been a no-brainer. I would have ditched the suit and insisted on wearing it.
A few years ago a person much older than me asked me why I thought the clothes we wear, that are acceptable, have changed so fundamentally in the past few generations.
He remembered wearing a suit to church on a Sunday, now he felt comfortable going in shorts. What had happened?
I was at a loss to answer. But I think somewhere in there has to be a generally loosening of social restrictions, the flattening of hierarchies and a general democratisation of society. I’m sure an academic might also consider that the number of people who wear uniforms in our society has dramatically fallen; armies just don’t play the roles in public life that they did in times past.
I think for many people this must pose difficult questions about what to wear to work.
If it had been a Friday I might have worn my Bafana shirt anyway. In one of the offices I work in, if the Boks are playing on the Saturday about half the office will be wearing something green, gold and comfortable on the Friday.
One of the interesting things of the past few weeks has been how the Bafana kit has changed too.
There is, you won’t be surprised to read, an explanation behind that. And yes, it involves money.
As Nqobile Ndlovu, the guy behind CashNSport Research and Advisory, explained on The Money Show on Friday evening, the reason you see so many people wearing so many different sporting tops representing the country is because of a change in approach.
There used to be quite a limited number of Springbok jerseys available. There was a set design and that was that.
Now, over the past 10 years or so the SA Rugby Union has made sure there are shirts or jerseys for the entire market. You can spend quite a small amount of money on a shirt that will have the colours and the logo, or, if you want, or if you just don’t know what else to buy him, quite a large amount of money on the proper replica, the jersey that is the real thing. Even if the body that will fill it is not.
The result of this is that for quite a few years, my daughter and her friends tended to wear something green and gold pretty much whenever they were not in a school uniform. You saw them wear it to parties, to formal events, to braais, to sit at home on a screen. Literally all the time.
At campsites it seemed that, at any one time, about a third of all of the people under 15 were wearing something Springbok related.
And each time someone bought them something like that, the SA Rugby Union would get a bit of cash.
Now the SA Football Association (still inexplicably led by Mr Danny Jordaan) is doing the same thing. Which is one of the reasons you are seeing so much Bafana gear.
As Ndlovu explains, there is a slight cost to this. When so many people are making so much product with your logo on it, the quality won’t be nearly as good as a much more controlled approach.
While the purists (both of them) might tut-tut at that, I don’t think it matters. What matters is money and getting everyone wearing your kit.
It doesn’t end there of course.
The brand Old School must be making a fortune, both through its brand of South African rugby jerseys, and through our obsession with which school we went to.
I have no idea how the licencing works there. I would like to think that the schools that find their badges on those jerseys do get something for the use of their logo.
Although, I notice with my own school, the badge is not present, even though the jersey has the name of the school on the product description. The giveaway is not just the colour but the fact that the year the school was founded is inscribed on one of the arms. I do wonder if the school, classy since 1902, just refused to license the badge or something.
There is something powerful about all of this. What we wear displays how we feel, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.
In these difficult and divided times, when people seek to benefit from making us feel different from each other, there is something very powerful about us all wearing something that represents our country.
We should all do it as often as we can, whether at work, at play or at worship. DM