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by George Bickerstaffe
Has the millennium marked the end of the era of
casual office dress? According to reports, last year saw a 10 percent
reduction in the number of U.S. firms endorsing "dress down
Fridays" or any other day of the week.
Contrast that with just five years ago when another
survey in October 1995 by the Society for Human Resource Management
(SHRM) and (understandably enough) casual clothing manufacturer
Levi Strauss reported that 42 percent of companies said casual dress
was permitted once a week and 28 percent permitted it every day.
"Casual dress policies," commented Michael
R Losey, president and CEO of SHRM, "are quickly becoming the
rule rather than the exception."
And sure enough in the intervening years those
figures escalated greatly. Management consultants, accountants and
lots of companies all jumped on the bandwagon. Allowing a little
laxity in dress sense, it was argued, improved staff morale, reduced
absenteeism, and improved recruitment and retention rates.
According to one theory, the current flip-flop
to a decline in support for casual dress isn't so much that those
benefits never materialized (though there was little evidence that
they would ever accrue). Instead, it is being linked to a cooling
of the economy. Apparently, casual clothes are appropriate for the
peak of the business cycle; more somber business dress for tougher
times. While there is equally little indication why this should
be so, it is certainly the case that, famously, hemlines have climbed
during such boom periods as the 1920s, 1960s and 1980s.
More to the point, casual business dress is a
key legacy of the IT boom that started in Silicon Valley and elsewhere
in the mid-1980s. With the young pioneers of Microsoft and the rest,
anything but formal in their dress sense, it was a short step to
associating informality with high growth and high profits. Twenty
years after, the spiritual heirs of these trendsetters -- the dot-com
entrepreneurs -- have demonstrated that grunge does not necessarily
equate with growth.
But perhaps realistically, though, it is all about
fashion. Dressing down was cool when everyone else was dressed up.
Now the reverse holds true. There is also the fact that a "work
uniform" -- an agreed set of dress codes -- is a whole lot
safer than personal free expression. An entire industry of advisors
and consultants grew up just trying to explain to people exactly
what "smart casual" meant -- though one wonders why anyone
should need to be told that sweatpants, see-through clothes, or
baseball caps are never suitable office attire.
In any case, there have been lots of straws in
the wind for some time suggesting that the casual dress fad was
just that. As far back as 1996, one web design company, agency.com,
introduced "dress up" Fridays to encourage employees to
swap jeans and T-shirts for suits.
And one of the most successful U.S. charities
in recent years is Dress for Success, also started in 1996, which
supplies low-income and other disadvantaged women with suitable
clothing to help them get a job. The charity stresses that it wants
donations only of "interview suits". When recipients land
a job, they receive another smart suit.
And not least, from across the Atlantic, where
casual business dress has gained such popularity that many of London's
posh "gentlemen's' outfitters" have closed city-center
shops, Prime Minister Tony Blair has recently gone on record in
a consumer magazine to stress his distaste for business suits. Since
Blair has spent the last six months' fending off a barrage of criticism
about being "out of touch," many commentators there are
confidently brushing down the old blue suit and buying a new white
shirt.
George Bickerstaffe is a highly respected commentator.
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