The Tradition of Wearing White
New Year's Eve, fashion, superstitions, and cultural musings.
Since I've known myself, New Year's Eve should be spent in a new white outfit. At least in Brazil we wear white. With just a few weeks until New Year's Eve, my mother would take the whole family to see our new white clothes. It was like a premonition. In order to have an incredible New Year, you had to wear white – a bonus if your underwear was yellow. Why is that, you might ask. It’s all about attraction.
Before manifestation became a hot topic in social platforms such as TikTok and Youtube, Brazilians seemed to be doing it on New Year’s Eve. Popularized on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador in the ‘70s, this tradition was born out of the African influences in our country, with religions such as Umbanda and Candomblé.
For these religions, white is the color of Oxalá, their greatest divinity. While its roots are in African traditions, it also has a symbolic dimension, as the color white is often connected with good energy, peace, harmony, kindness, renewal and protection.
But then the varied color palette began to be interpreted for its symbolism too – from pink to green – and people began to wear clothes according to what they wanted to attract. Yellow is for money, green health, red love, blue tranquility, and so on.
Still, most people wear white – you can easily see a video or photo of a beach or avenue in Brazil with an entire crowd in white. Now as a typical Brazilian practice, one that I will never leave behind, the very act of wearing white on New Year's Eve indicates factors beyond utility and sartorial matters, but also cultural and spiritual ones.
