Workplace Dress: From Cheer to the Blues

Last week, I wrote that about the only thing giving me cheer lately was what seemed to be a new trend of dressing up at work. Then I read Christina Binkley’s article in the Wall Street Journal on workplace dress and immediately came down with a case of the blues.

Ms. Binkley begins with a story about a 22-year-old entrepreneur interviewing candidates for a marketing job. When one candidate showed up in a business suit, the entrepreneur believed he was presenting a false image of himself, tantamount to a lie. The entrepreneur sees traditional attire as a form of cover-up in his workplace: “We’re not trying to hide anything with our clothes.” That, of course, is a lie. If we weren’t trying to hide anything, we wouldn’t wear clothes.

But there’s more. Young managers believe office attire expresses an employee’s inner soul. Though this inane point of view is undoubtedly meant to be profound, it can’t even get to first base of the deep when we learn that young workers also believe that wearing particular brands or labels communicates substance. As one young sartorial pretender says: “You know when someone’s real and when someone’s corporate.” My blues are moving toward depression.

Ms. Binkley’s article ends with the young entrepreneur’s rueful recollection of a time when he wore a traditional, somewhat expensive, business suit his parents had bought for him to make a presentation. He laments: “I think I wasn’t really myself.”

Assignment to HR: Prepare dress code for entrepreneur’s business. Make it practical and legal, of course. But also — make it young; make it foolish; make it happy.

1. 

   E. says:

   November 26, 2008 at 10:00 am

   I only wear mine to blog in.

   http://www.eclectipundit.com/2008/09/blogging-shoes.html
2. 

   John Phillips says:

   November 26, 2008 at 10:22 am

   And all this time, I thought you weren’t holding back anything.