Let’s look at history shall we? Has anyone paid attention to the famous picture of the Alter of Slabodka, the one in which we wears a silk top hat and holds a silver tipped walking stick. His rainment in that picture was the epitome of upper bourgois dress in his times. He dressed like a banker or statesmen. The Alter wanted his students to adopt the trappings of the polite society of his day (malbusho shel adam kvodo hi). He expected his boys to eat with proper ettiquete (i.e. with a napkin in one’s lap, knowing which utensil to use and when, to fold the napkin when leaving the table etc) and to dress accordingly. That explains why he abandoned the traditional broad brimmed hat of Polish rabbis in favor of the “hoch tzilinder,” and why his students were seen in black and grey stripped pants, black jackets and bowler hats; the way a proper young man dressed in those days. As clothing styles changed, yeshiva bochurim followed suit. Look at the pictures of the students at the Mir in the 1930’s. They were all stylishly dressed (and I point out the hats mostly not black). It wasn’t until the 1960’s, when JFK killed the hat industry by not wearing one to his innauguration, that there arose a “yeshivish” style of dress, which was basically a rarification of the style of dress in the last non-Jewish generation to regularly wear hats. In short yeshiva bochurim dressed like IBM salesmen (IBM having had the most conservative dress code in the corporate world). But while IBM moved on in their sartorial development, the yeshiva bochurim stayed put, giving tangential expression to the newly popular separatist ultra-Orthodoxy that began post WWII. Not only were theu different than the rest of the world, they now dressed differently also. Now what was your question?
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