I hate telling people what to wear.
It brings me great anxiety when someone in my choir says, “What do we wear?”
My job is to help all the members of my choir sing their best. I do this by teaching about vocal technique, vowel shape, and music theory. I do this by ensuring the community in the choir is welcoming and joyful. And when it comes to performance day, I’m becoming more convinced that asking people to adhere to an overly prescriptive dress code goes against “helping my choir sing their best.”
Instead, I ask my choir to wear clothes that make them feel great.
These days, my go-to dress code is “Summer Backyard Wedding.” I got this from GiUng Lee when we were working together with Prairie Voices, and I love it.
It means: wear something fun and a little formal. It could be colourful, it could be plain, but it’s definitely something that you feel fantastic about wearing.
Everyone ends up looking great, and singing well, because they’re wearing whatever feels the best for them! The choir looks cohesive because everyone looks great!
Because honestly, I’m getting tired of boring all-black performance outfits…anyone else?
I know that not everyone in my choirs has access to specific styles or colours, or the means to buy something just for one performance. But I hope that everyone has at least one thing in their closet that makes them feel good.
I do give some outlines:
Make sure you can take a full bow (aka consider the depth of a neckline, and the height of a skirt for those in front and behind you)
Make sure you can stand for the whole concert, and sing properly (aka consider not wearing heels)
Optional, depending on the situation: keep shoulders covered (if we’re performing in a church setting, for example)
But, as I said in my post from a few years ago about gender-neutral dress codes, I want the singers to be comfortable in their performance outfit so that they can sing their best.
That post was focussed on keeping gender out of a dress code, but in some ways, rejecting a dress code even further is just an extension of the same thing. The less prescriptive I can be about what people wear, the better.
Because — and this might be controversial — I would rather watch and listen to a choir that is wearing mismatched outfits enjoying themselves because they are comfortable, than one that looks perfectly put-together.