Hipsters.

Not long ago people dressed up to go out, they dressed up for Sunday and they dressed up to go on holidays. They didn't dress up to travel on the bus but with the commoditisation of air travel, along with the drop in airfares, jumping on a plane has become an everyday occurrence, like jumping on the bus to go to the shops. If you read the latest determinations handed out by some airlines it seems the dress sense of ordinary people was left behind at the customs counter.

Here we have become used to the long accepted singlet and thongs brigade heading to Bali, the end of year footy flannel fiascos and the ubiquitous "tracky dacks", as inroads into the fashion sense completely abrogate the allure of travel from the romantic age of suits and dresses. For the airlines, this has become a minefield as passengers push the boundaries of good taste, good taste decided by Captains and flight attendants.

Being denied boarding on a Southwest aircraft recently, a woman named Avital posed for pictures at Las Vegas airport in a T shirt showing too much cleavage for the airline to allow boarding. Vegas and cleavage go together well and posing at the airport says enough to consider that Southwest may have been within their rights on this occasion. It's a fine line, what constitutes good taste in a confined space, especially when there are limited places to cast your gaze if you have seen all the movies.

T shirts with inappropriate language or slogans, swim wear and no shoes have all been targets in recent years as airline passengers have been denied boarding. Airlines will tell you they don't enforce dress codes and they certainly don't document dress codes and unless there are safety issues involved, ie no shoes, they take a pretty lenient view of their passenger's couture. They also need to consider the laws and mores of society that make it okay to walk the streets in all manner of dress. After all who knew we wanted to wear our jeans so low to help advertise Calvin Klein and Dolce and Gabbana underwear, Marky Mark has a lot to answer for. So much so, that a passenger pulled from a US Airlines plane last year was arrested for not pulling up the said jeans and covering the said underwear, yet the prosecutor declined to file said charges saying, “They can’t arrest him for what someone perceives to be inappropriate attire.”

So there are lines and then there are lines. The freedom of speech act, oft quoted in the US, pertains to the government but does allow private companies to bar someone coming into their restaurant or boarding their aircraft if they think language or slogans on T shirts are inappropriate or their dress sense will cause disruption within that space. For the airlines it ends up being, not a dress code issue but a disruption issue and in the small confines of an aluminium canister hurtling through the sky at 900 kilometres, any disruption should be avoided.

The airlines will continue to work in the grey when it comes to decisions made by chic fashionistas determined to stand out. Our only hope is fashion icons like Lady Gaga remain reasonably chaste in their choice of garments or you could be sitting next to someone so distracting you won't notice the safety presentation. Come to think of it, a little distraction might be just what we need.