When To Dress Up And When Not To Dress Up

You’ve probably read me blog posts on safety and dressing in Latin America.

This should give you an overall view of how to dress but there’s a bit more to it then what I’ve mentioned in the past. The thing is that it’s difficult to condense everything into two small blog posts. And if you know me a bit already, you know that I’d rather fall short on the side of safety. That’s why I usually recommend people in general not to dress to flashy.

But dressing down isn’t always good, even though it might be safe. It all depends on where your going. I’ll lay out some examples based on Colombian experience so far this year:

• Cartagena Old City: Dress Up
• Medellin 33: Dess Normal
• Medellin El Poblado: Dress Normal or Dress Up
• Medellin Mangos: Dress Up
• Barranquilla 82 & North: Dress Normal or Dress Up
• Anywhere in Colombia stratus 4: Dress Normal
• Anywhere in Colombia stratus 2-3: Dress Down

In the above examples I’ve layed out three ways of dressing:

• Dressing Up: Some Jewlery, Nice watch, Chain, Rings, Button Down Collard Shirt, Nice Shoes (Depending on the city and locale a suite)
• Dressing Normal: Maybe No Jewlery (Depends), Not too many accessories, Possible Button Down or Brand Name T-Shirt, Shoes or Sneakers
• Dress Down: No Jewlerly, Sneakers, Normal T-Shirt

If it’s your first time someplace and you’re not sure where you’re going or how the people dress there, I recommend you error on the side of safety. If anything you can dress down go back to your place and dress up and come back to the place.

In general my safety and dressing tips recommend guys to dress down so they won’t stand out and so that their safety will be the most important outcome. However, as you spend more time in Latin America and as you get more comfortable with your surroundings and get a better feeling of how safe the places you frequent are, you can elect to dress up a bit more.

Whenever you do this, do so incrementally. Don’t go all decked-out on the first night. Upgrade little by little. Dressing up definitely does help with the higher class ladies, and it’s a luxury worth taking part in, especially in foreign countries, just remember to always start on the safe side and ease into it.

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