[osreb]

“No white after Labor Day” is more symbolic than a rule. Typically, city-dwellers that were well-off enough to vacation during the hot months of summer wore white, not only as a means of escaping the heat but also as a fashionable symbol of their flight from the gritty city. In the cooler months, they would return and pull out the darker clothing, thus stowing away the breezy white apparel.

Since Labor Day is unofficially considered the end of summer, it became a guideline for the transition from warm weather to cool weather, and thus the wardrobe change from white to dark became tradition.