Yesterday was an “orange shirt day” at my daughter’s school. She was supposed to wear something orange to honour indigenous people, who were forced to go through the residential school system in Canada. Incidentally, yesterday was also a Monday, which is a “number one uniform day” in her school. So she was wondering whether she would still have to wear a tie with her orange T-shirt. I did not know what the rule was, so had to rely on my basic fashion sense: T-shirt + tie = bad.
The funny thing is that the incident that gave the orange shirt day its name had to do with a girl, who had her orange shirt taken away because it did not comply with the residential school rules. And nowadays, we are puzzled about how to break dress code in the most socially acceptable way. Oh, the irony…