U.S. government makes a pitch to restore ‘civility’ on flights: dress up
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s appeal to dress with “respect” on flights seems doomed to fail, recalling not only America’s air travel past but colonial history, experts say.
Between getting to the airport on time, weathering delays and cancellations and stuffing yourself into increasingly smaller seats, air travel is already stressful enough. Would wearing a suit and tie make it better?
That’s the pitch that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently made as part of a campaign to restore “courtesy and class” to flying in the U.S. at a time when disruptive passenger incidents remain higher than in 2019, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Dressing with respect, whether it’s a pair of jeans and a decent shirt, I would encourage people to maybe dress a little better, which encourages us to maybe behave a little better,” Duffy told reporters at a recent press conference. “Let’s try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport.”
Duffy never directly used the words “dress code” — something many airlines already have policies for — but for experts his comments raise far bigger questions. How much can, and will, the government police cultural norms like how people dress? If it does, will people listen?
“You just look at fashion history over thousands of years, and it fails all the time,” said Frances Nelson McSherry, a teaching professor of theater at Northeastern University, professional costume designer and fashion historian. “By saying ‘keep your socks on’ or ‘keep your shoes on’ or ‘don’t wear minimal clothing,’ it’s not going to work. People will do what they want and laugh at any kind of rules. The only way you can get away with that is to bar people at the door.”
Many travelers agree that “civility” in air travel is “fast becoming like the extinct dodo bird,” as lawyer Belladonna Rogers wrote on X. But for others, Duffy’s solution doesn’t align with the problem.
“Sean Duffy thinks the secret to surviving insane flight delays, out-of-control passenger fights, and airlines ripping you off is … not wearing pajamas. Yeah, that’ll fix everything,” Charles Parreira, a 59-year-old Massachusetts resident, wrote on X. “Maybe try fixing the damn airline system before lecturing us on jeans and dignity.”
For McSherry, the Trump administration’s push to return America to a “golden age of travel” recalls a very specific era in U.S. air travel. In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Americans did dress up to fly. Men wore suits; women wore dresses, hats and gloves. However, flying at the time was more of a luxury, not the commodity it has become today.
Over time, air travel became more affordable and normalized. At the same time, everyday fashion became increasingly more casual, starting especially in the early 2000s and 2010s with the growth of athleisure, McSherry explained.
“Moving beyond that, moving into [the late 2010s] and then the pandemic where everybody got casual all the time, we haven’t really popped out of that,” McSherry said.
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Some airlines have gotten on board with casual flight fashion while still appealing to those who want “civility” in their airline experience. This year, Air France partnered with French fashion powerhouse Jacquemus on a set of luxury pajamas for first class travelers.
However, Duffy’s plea for a return to “civility” in air travel evokes more than just a time when people dressed to impress while flying. Clothing expresses not just style but values, which is why there is a long history of using clothing as a political tool, said Nina Sylvanus, an associate professor of anthropology at Northeastern.
“This is precisely why during colonialism, conversion worked through the indoctrination of values through cloth and clothing along with language and rhetoric about hygiene and purity,” Sylvanus explained.
Duffy’s comments about dressing with “respect” evoke that political history, but they are more vague than the kinds of laws that governed dress in pre-industrial societies. According to Sylvanus, historically that has strategic and political value too.
“The point is to keep it arbitrary precisely because you don’t define what respectability is or what civility is, but you define it always by its breach, by the kinds of transgressions so you can exclude all kinds of cultural and stylistic practices,” Sylvanus said.
Even if the transportation secretary’s campaign is a soft launch for more robust cultural policies, McSherry insisted they will run up against the realities of U.S. air travel. Even after the disruptions caused by the recent government shutdown, air traffic controllers are understaffed and overworked, leading to delays and cancellations for passengers.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration nixed proposed legislation that would have required airlines to pay passengers for lengthy delays, and airlines are lobbying hard to roll back even more passenger protections.
“Fashion is about everything. It’s about how we are, how we feel, how we express ourselves, how we appear to others,” McSherry said. “Thinking about those things that are aggravating and finding comfort in comfortable clothes is part of the equation as well.”
