Jeans are normal trousers.

In inpatient psych, street clothes are a common dress code. There’s some variation between facilities, but clean, untorn, no novelty tshirts, somewhat modest, no camou, are items you will often see in the line up. I started going to a new facility and failed to read this in detail due to habit and personal inertia. That’s on me. I showed up at this facility for over two years running wearing basic: black/dark non tshirt shirt, long cardigan (open front “jumper”, maybe, to you), and new grade looking deep indigo jeans. Black boots. Some variation, but that’s a normal street clothes look for me at work. You know how it is, some of us dress like we live in a type of street clothes uniform because we dislike shopping, multiples of the same items.

No one noticed I was wearing jeans for over two years, or if they did, they said nothing. Then one day, a new house supervisor saw me stooped over a computer out on unit at the nurses station, documenting before I was about to head out, and awkwardly approached to first clarify that I was wearing jeans and then to again, awkwardly, tell me jeans are not allowed at the facility.

Pause, two workers look at my legs, one says “Those are jeans?” Leans in, peers closely, then says “I guess they are.”

My point is, enforcement of non-egregious dress code violations are a choice. Those choices often rest with single individuals.

In neither case do these jeans disrupt the environment. In neither case were people harmed by the wearing of jeans. Nor are the trousers of choice tools required for standardizing the way a task/sport is completed. Offensive? Maybe to a prior generation in a “that is just not how things are done!” kind of way that is primarily fed by generational inertia.

For my part, unless I wanted to start wearing skirts, leggings (not appropriate for work imo), or wedding attendance level clothing, this change required me to go shopping.

Given how professional poker players dress, I’m not sure what the “sport” application of a uniform in chess is for, beyond “this is just how we do things”inertia.