calling bullshit. this is a bigger issue. we don't just lack 'style', we lack fundamental social abilities, and thus fundamental joys, and this shows in what we wear, and mirror to one another.

The proletariat should observe modesty in every respect in his life, Comrade Mudede! Never forget that the fashion of the bourgeois is a tool of oppression, an outward display of class warfare--nay, a symptom of capitalist excess! It, in every regard, is meant to oppress by demonstrating economic disparity and dominance over the working classes by the owning classes! MARX SMASH!

Boston's pretty casual, too. And aside from rural areas being removed from the centers where these fashion trends are hatched (explaining the lag), it isn't practical to wear relatively expensive clothing to perform the tasks that they complete in their dreary little lives. Durability is more useful than visual satisfaction for the tasks required. What explains urban areas like boston or faggy seattle being less "fashion conscious" than, say, new york? Once again, industry and demographics. Susan Sontag offered an unverifiable and unfalsifiable statement (the absence of style is a style, just like nothing is something, righto bingo--the lack if a description is descriptive...with recourse to another description...collapsing the simple minded claim in hopeless contradiction)... Go figure! Literary criticism is practically incoherent! So perhaps the absence of "style" isn't what you meant, correcting for your equivocation in the meaning of 'style'.

Also, Fearless Leader has imparted knowledge that faux liberalists show solidarity with the working people out of guilt for complicity in capitalist exploitation by eschewing fashionable wears, dancing boys and girls, and snarling midgets ("little persons") on leashes heralding their arrival at trendy locations to hobnob with equally repulsive conspicuous consumerists to downplay their direct involvement in creating poverty and suffering and stealthily blend in with those whom they deem inferior by social status. Such is the power of this meme that some consider it a fashion statement to present as a sloppy slob--individualism comodified into a hollow rebellion against the cool kids (looking like suck and buying into downtrodden is the new consumerist identity). Or, it could be something much simpler.

Doesn't help that seattle has the least attractive women in the lower 48. The fact that they dress badly only adds to my urge to get to LA and NYC 3-4 times a year.