Dress Codes: The Museum Exhibit

A number of posts have appeared on this blog about dress codes. (Click here and here.) They’ve all dealt with dress in the workplace, employer policies, the application of employment law to an employer’s dress code or appearance policy, and an occasional lawsuit bubbling out of a workplace dress code controversy. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that my attention was drawn to an article in the New York Times about dress codes titled “Beyond a Simple Fashion Statement.”

The article is about the International Center of Photography (ICP), a photography museum, school and research center located in Midtown Manhattan. It’s recently begun its Third Triennial, representing the third and final phase of the center’s Year of Fashion, a series of projects that critically examine fashion and its relationship to art and other cultural and social phenomena. The Third Triennial is called “Dress Codes” and presents a global survey of new work in photography and video focused on fashion.

I quickly saw that neither the article nor ICP’s Third Triennial had much to do with workplace attire. However, the article’s first paragraph hooked me into reading every paragraph and made me think of “Dress Codes” as an employment issue after all. Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett is described in her appearance in a video featured as part of “Dress Codes” as amazingly ordinary and frumpy, wearing clunky boots, unflattering slacks and a sagging black top. This isn’t the Cate Blanchett I remember in Elizabeth, The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, and The Aviator.      

But it sets the stage for an exhibit that lacks the normal sartorial flare one would expect in a photography and video production about garments and fashion. As the Times article skillfully articulates, clothing has become a language, too often dealing with superficiality instead of substance. Clothing has come to represent human desire for recognition which can morph into an unhealthy need for attention that others don’t receive, then into the desire to be envied, and finally into the will to be powerful.

So, workplace dress is depicted in the ICP’s “Dress Codes.” We want to be noticed at work. We want co-workers, supervisors, and executives to pay attention to us. When we have the opportunity to interact with them or make a presentation to them, it’s as important to look good, dress the part, and wear attention-grabbing clothing as it is to say something meaningful or to show our substantive ability to make a contribution to the organization. Are we that superficial? Probably.

I think Cate Blanchett is a talented actress. Would I think that, had she worn baggy clothes and looked ordinary in her movie successes? “Dress Codes” provides other looks at how clothing (perhaps what we think of clothing) makes us look superficial, even ludicrous. Depicting our obsession with clothing, ”Dress Codes” glimpses violence caused by five garment-grabbing women determined to get what they came for and sadness caused by a group of Dutch-born Arab men discussing the importance of appearance while modeling designer clothes that would consume almost all of their family’s paultry income.

The recession has resulted in a lot of talk about returning to basics, realizing the importance of family, and focusing on giving rather than consuming. One wonders if the way we look at clothes will change as we try to have new thoughts about what makes (or should make) life meaningful. We’ll see.

Employer dress codes are often written to address length, chest hair, cleavage, skin, tightness, color, denim, shirt tails, belts, coats, ties, pant suits, open- or close-toed shoes, socks, hose, t-shirts, caps, collared shirts, hair length, etc. Employers have great latitude in what they can include in a dress code. But I wonder what most dress codes accomplish. Do they further the purpose of a business? Do they promote greater teamwork? Do they make better bosses and workers? Do they tell employees they’ll be judged for what they wear?

“Dress Codes” might make us stop and think. We’d think about the purpose of a dress code. We’d think about dress codes in a positive way instead of a negative way. We’d see dress codes as vehicles to encourage employees, not to criticize them. We’d think about tearing up our dress codes and starting over. It’s not that dress codes are unimportant. It’s that they’re important for reasons we’re often inclined to overlook.