The Return of Dressing Up?

I’ve frequently posted about dress codes and appearance policies at work. Some of these posts have been based on articles by Christina Binkley, style editor for the Wall Street Journal. She closes out the year with an article entitled “The Year of Dressing Ridiculously,” made so by the recession, extreme efforts to get people to shop, and fashion designers doing what fashion designers do.

She surveys the bad and the ugly but also notes a few positive developments, two of which caught my eye. If these two developments become trends, then the decades-long movement of dressing down (casually, if you like) at work could be replaced by by the oldie-but-goodie of dressing up, the return of which my previous posts have advocated.

The first development Ms. Binkley calls “Mad Men,” a form of dress inspired by the TV show of the same name. In that show, the men dress up. They wear coats, dress shirts, ties, and appropriate shoes. It’s the perfect men’s look that never goes out of style. Could it be back? Could it be here to stay? Could it be that when men go to work at the office, they’ll stop looking like gardeners?

The second development Ms. Binkley simply calls “The Dress.” Women have begun wearing dresses again — dresses! As Ms Binkley suggests, they make women look like grown-ups.

It’s already apparent that financial reform, common sense compensation, and honesty won’t be products of our Great Recession. It’s business as usual in the world of finance and business. Perhaps the one good thing that the recession will cause is a return to dressing up. Admittedly, it’s not as significant as honesty, but it is, at least, something we can point to as a silver lining.