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New Yorker Nancy Jiang thought she was dressed appropriately for the sultry summer weather on a recent trip to romantic Venice — but apparently, the Italians thought otherwise.
The fashionable traveler was shocked when a security guard at St. Mark’s Basilica shamed her for her outfit — leaving her humiliated while standing in line for the popular religious attraction, and blaming “misogyny” for the mix-up.
In a first-person essay published by The Sun, Jiang recalled her embarrassing experience.
Jiang revealed that she was traveling with a friend, who had missed their earlier flight.
Therefore, she had one day to see some of the exhibitions by herself before her pal caught up to her.
Jiang noted that she packed light for the vacation, bringing only a linen dress, two pairs of jeans and a few blouses.
The weather outside was a scorching 90 degrees and Jiang decided to wear her sundress to brave the heat.
But it was when she arrived at the bustling St. Mark’s Square where the ancient cathedral stood, she saw that the many tourists seemed very covered-up.
Confused, she stood, wondering why people were wearing long clothes in such heat.
“It took me far too long to realize the mistake I had made,” she wrote. “I pulled up my mobile ticket and saw the dress code warning, which confirmed my suspicion that I was not, at the moment, dressed appropriately for the Basilica.”
Jiang didn’t have much time to jam back to her hotel and change, so she bought a souvenir T-shirt and pulled it over her frock so she could get in line for the excursion.
“I thought I had narrowly dodged disaster,” Jiang scribed, adding that her knees, shoulders and collarbones were covered.
Once she arrived inside the chapel at the front of the line, the guard stared at her judgingly and mumbled a in Italian “a few choice words about my character and/or taste in fashion.”
Jiang kept nervously tugging at her dress to make sure it masked her knees as the sentinel let out a “dramatic sigh” and shook his head disapprovingly.
“I returned an equally dramatic sigh,” Jiang stated. “And pulled the dress impossibly lower, mentally daring him to say something, anything, again.”
But after “what felt like a decade,” the guard stood down and allowed her access to the church.