Dress Code for the Unemployed Man?

This blog covers the legal and practical issues surrounding workplace dress codes and appearance policies from time to time. As I think I’ve demonstrated, if I were the dress code czar, I’d be unpopular, perhaps despised. I’m a bit conservative when it comes to dress at work — set in my ways, if you will.

Christina Binkley raises a new dress or appearance code issue in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Unemployed men (particularly former corporate executives), it seems, have stopped shaving in large numbers. Some are contemplating a change in lifestyle. Some are experiencing a welcome release from workaday habits. Some are taking stock before deciding what to do with their lives. Some realize they have nothing to lose.

The newly bearded are having to deal with issues that are concomitant with facial hair. Beards require close trimming around the mouth to avoid embarrassment while eating. Beards need to match the color of one’s dyed hair. I suspect some of these hairy guys are feeling a testosterone lumberjack rush that would’ve been frowned on in the workplace.

Despite my conservative tendencies when it comes to dress and appearance policies at work, I’ve never had a problem with beards, so long as they are neatly trimmed. There’s no place for the stubble beard, a goatee, or a handlebar mustache. But a good, neat beard makes most men look distinguished, authoritative, in my opinion.

As I was reading Ms. Binkley’s article, it occurred to me that this trend among unemployed execs could begin to bleed over into the corporate world, which has remained anti-beard for the most part. Dress codes and appearance policies just might begin to change in favor of facial hair as one of the unexpected results of our economic crisis. But then I read that the bewhiskered unemployed chicken out when they have a job interview. They shave.

I guess that means they won’t be experimenting with piercings and tattoos during their period of unemployment. I’d hold off, therefore, on revising the dress/appearance code – at least, for now.