By today's standards, these men are wearing formal attire.

 The previous post on male attire criticized the self-deprecating, informal dress of men today, an outward sign of the flight from masculinity and authority. At work and on public occasions, most men look better in suits than they do in polo shirts and slacks, or even open shirts without jackets. Why have men abandoned suits? One reader offers an explanation and a brief history of dress-down dress.

Sean writes:

I work for a bank and belong to that shrinking pool of white-collar men who actually still wear a suit and tie every day to work. My employer officially switched to a “business casual” dress code fifteen years ago, but tellingly, suits are still the preferred dress for all of its client-facing officers. Woe to the new hire who doesn’t show up with at least a blazer (ties are somewhat optional if you don’t have a client meeting).

I spend a great deal of time meeting with clients who wish to borrow money from the bank and it is vital to appear sober and serious. You have a much harder time doing this in a polo shirt and khakis than in a suit. Men’s casual dress is not fitted, it shows off every sag and wrinkle in one’s body and subtly destroys any sort of distance or objectivity between the businessmen and his client, not to mention the businessman and his boss.

Although it does feature a couple of crude words (nothing too serious), there is a more comprehensive post on this loss of respect at Udolpho’s blog.

The lie that has been sold to white-collar workers is that casual dress codes have been set to allow workers to “relax”, show their “individuality,” and enjoy their jobs more.  I could not disagree more.

Not surprisingly, you can put much of the blame for this de-emphasizing of business dress on feminism and its corporate male “allies”. When women first stormed the corporate world in the seventies, they adopted modified versions of men’s suits, ones that often appeared utterly ridiculous. My mother replied that men of that time took corporate women even less seriously when they tried to dress like businessmen and not women. So, as a long-term solution, having women adopt men’s business dress was unsuitable (no pun intended).

Now, one area that was regarded as a “natural” fit for many corporate women was the Human Resources / corporate operations department. As the last pre-Baby Boomer generation retired from the workplace in the late eighties and these women now ascended to more senior positions in businesses, they deliberately threw out the old generation’s standards of acceptable dress and replaced it with a more “egalitarian” code. Since they could not win respect from the men who ran businesses, they would
strip them of all the plumage that helped establish an air of authority and sobriety around them.

The casual dress revolution in business is aimed at destroying one archetype – the hard-charging alpha male businessman typified by Don Draper on the “Mad Men” television show. I am not blind to the excesses of my grandfather’s and father’s generations – wet bars in the offices, adultery, etc. Yet the new standards are far worse.

I am sure Gates, Ballmer, etc. really believe that they are “men of the people” and just “regular guys”, despite possessing untold authority and billions of dollars. But I am sure that unconsciously, they know it is far easier to emasculate and diminish their employees by making them wear polo shirts and rumpled khakis to work instead of three-piece suits. Gates and Ballmer send a deliberate message: you, our employees, are so unimportant to us as people, we won’t even bother to dress up for you.

Laura writes:

Sean’s last point, that this dress is a sign of disrespect to employees, is something I had never considered and is a great insight. 

It’s interesting that when they first gained entry to previously male jobs, women adopted variations of the male suit. But they have since gone in the other direction, toward hyper-feminine clothing that exposes cleavage and curves. As I’ve said before,  this represents a desperate effort to recover lost femininity. As other commenters have noted, it is also just a form of female aggression.

Jeffrey Whiting writes:

I work in an engineering field where the expected attire has retreated from even the semblance of “business casual” semi-formality into the outright “casual” (one might even say, “profane”). Jeans (sometimes even shorts), t-shirts, polos and hoodies are the norm and any amount of dress up is subtly disparaged as reflecting a stuffy, wound up, or even unbalanced personality. This attitude was revealed to me some years ago by a recruiter after going on several interviews arranged by him and receiving feedback that my attire (a traditional suit and tie) and manners were unsuitable to a contemporary office culture. [Laura writes: Stop the world! I want to get off.]

It seems to me that most businesses no longer desire professional attire for the many of the same reasons most standards of dress and behavior have evaporated today: there is a great, overwhelming desire for everything – from business to religious practice and interpersonal relationships – to be casual, spontaneous and unfettered by any formality. Presumably, if the traditonal mores are removed our experience of life will be more enjoyable and authentic.

Once a upon a time men and women would dress up to go out on the town, but nowadays if you observe young people fraternizing in public places you will see very few suits, ties or skirts anymore. The new social uniform is the trendy look: for men tight, cigarette jeans, loosely fitting, unbuttoned patterned shirts and if a tie is somehow involved it is usually loosened below an unbuttoned collar. For women, it is all that has been discussed here ad nauseum.

In fact, I have received much dating advice stating to the effect to not make much of an effort to dress up before going off a-wooing: suits and ties are too intimidating, propriety isn’t approachable, and looking to take the affair seriously with any outward signs (“flowers are passé”) is positively off-putting. What is important is portraying oneself as completely spontaneous and “fun.”

In work, and every other social area, modern life tries to generate meaning by being free and “natural” without any regard for how the former customs helped make life productive and truly enjoyable.

Laura writes:

Hoodies? Can you imagine Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller in a hoodie?

Women find men very attractive in suits, but probably they are viewed by liberals as a sign of conservativism. 

Sheila C. writes: 

For years my husband wore suit and tie to work, when all his coworkers had long ago abandoned them. His office finally went to all casual dress, at least for those who do not deal with customers face-to-face. Given that he’s on the phone most of the time, it makes sense, but I still miss the air of “authority and sobriety” (apt phrase) he had when properly dressed for work. It’s truly ironic how so many publications feature articles on women dressing successfully for their careers, and charitable organizations seek donations of suitable work attire for welfare mothers or high school drop outs entering the workforce, yet only men are counseled to dress in a casual, relaxed, informal manner. Only those who provide the backbone of our society and economy are to appear nonthreatening, unimportant, and diminished. Perhaps that is why anyone in a uniform (police, firefighter, soldier) projects so much authority and sobriety in contrast. Lawrence Auster makes a number of good points about the degradation of our military, but I must disagree with him on current military attire. I don’t think it’s the battle dress itself that’s the problem (when I’ve gone to the airport and greeted returning troops from Iraq, they didn’t look like they were playing dress-up to me), but rather the attitude of those wearing it and the cultural make up of those in uniform that degrades it. When you have pregnant women engulfed by their ACUs and slouching, overweight men (or the commander wearing a Santa hat?!), I don’t think the most formal of military dress would change the impression of weakness and sloth they project.

Actually, that returns to a point I made in a different comment, about my son shuffling his feet. I’ve lived in Singapore (where everyone shuffles their feet) and a number of other foreign countries (and visited numerous others), and there really is a distinct “American” way of walking and carrying oneself – I know I used to read articles about it in the past. Americans traditionally walked with an air of both relaxed confidence and authority, as opposed to the more deferential posture of Asians or nonobtrusive Europeans. Don’t self-defense “experts” always counsel women to walk in public with a focused, direct stride to project an air of confidence and awareness? I’m not saying that clothes don’t make the man, but rather that if there is no true man to begin with, clothes won’t hide their diminished persona. 

Laura writes:

Interesting points.

Once people get used to dressing casually, it’s very hard to go back. It’s cheaper and easier to wear machine-washable polos and Dockers than suits that need to be dry-cleaned and shirts that need ironing. Women used to take care of men’s clothes; they don’t give the time to it today.

Laura adds:

Here is an interesting  quote from the Udolpho article mentioned by Sean:

The corporate boy-man is expert at making ambiguous and vague what was once clear and purposeful. Although he still demands absolute obedience to management (and is constantly discovering new humiliations for his employees to endure as part of this), he also encourages the erosion of boundaries and customs that normally define the social hierarchy. Putting everyone into status-less “business casual” attire is an important step in this, as are “everyone in a cube” office layouts and those departmental socials at which you are supposed to fraternize as much as political correctness allows with everyone above, alongside, and below you as if you are all step-brothers. Friendly is the new professional, but the friendliness is so shallow and debased by the demands of submissiveness that it just makes one feel more inhuman than ever.

Laurence B. writes:

I’ve been reading the discussion on the contemporary dress code with particular interest; it is something I have been noting with distaste more and more recently as well. I just wanted to mention a few additional observations that add to the general point. When someone, particularly a young man, wears a collared shirt, he is particularly discouraged from tucking it in. If he does, people feel uncomfortable, timid, and do more to get out of his way on the sidewalk. Why the inadvertent intimidation? It’s not the intention of the man to seem unapproachable or stodgy, but it’s a stimulus-response at this point on American university campuses (where I reside).

The discussion made me think of one above all the others (as he no doubt well wants). The corporate-casual look Obama seems to sport whenever he can, with the rolled up sleeves, loosened tie, the sort of  “…c’mon guys, let’s be real…let’s rap; take a load off; I’m your buddy and I want to be informal with you” look, is embarrassing, just as embarrassing as his bowing spree. His frequent down-dressing typifies his political outlook, that everyone can be casual friends and little more is required in way of seriousness except a redistribution of wealth…no problem since we’re all buddies. I’m surprised he hasn’t yet asked Medvedev to come shoot some hoops at the White House while they work out this missile thing.

Sean writes:

One commenter mentioned the general disintegration of standards of dress in all walks of life. I especially see this at church. The men at my church come from a variety of backgrounds (I am a white Protestant). The white men in the congregation who are over sixty wear a jacket and tie every Sunday, and three-piece suits on the high holidays. Likewise, the African gentlemen of all ages are similarly attired, even the young boys. White men under fifty, however, dress in a shockingly informal fashion even for Easter Sunday. Even when I was a child in the late eighties, you never saw a man wear casual clothes to the churches I attended. Last Easter, though, one unfortunate lout showed up in a pullover zippered sweater with jeans, and his five-year-old son with a Spiderman T-shirt. Fortunately, enough men in the congregation were wearing jackets and ties that he and his wife (who wore a casual but relatively decent sundress) grew visibly embarrassed. I doubt they will dress like that next Easter. I didn’t want to humiliate this man in front of his family, but I wanted to demand why he would disrespect the Lord, when I am sure he would eagerly put on a jacket and tie if he knew he was going to be interviewed for a big promotion at work.

I don’t mistake the sign for the substance, of course. There are certain men who make a fetish of classic men’s dress, like some of the aficionados at clothing sites like “Ask Andy About Clothes.” They obsess so much over dress codes that I think they might excuse any sort of wretched behaviour if the gentleman in question were to wear a tie. I have many trade contractors as clients who wear hard hats, overalls, and steel toed boots every day, and I certainly don’t disrespect them. They are doing respectable work, and that is their uniform. However, those of them I know socially always “clean up” for important events by wearing a suit. “Business casual” and other, even more disrespectful clothing styles like the hoodies described above, are usually the preserve of middle class or upper class men who have a vested interest in denying their masculinity. They seem to shout, “I’m a male, but please don’t ever think I’m a man.”

I’ll close with a good story. My brother is an Army officer in a dragoon regiment, who will be deployed to Afghanistan in May (I should note that I and my family are Canadian for this story to make sense). While Canadian soldiers wear the same sort of “military pajama” camos as Americans most days, they do still break out for formal events the traditional “redcoats”, which are based on nineteenth-century British uniforms. My brother was married last summer in his ceremonial uniform, which consisted of a formal, high-collared red coat with medals. Had he chosen to do so, he could have worn a high-plumed helmet and spurs- a cavalry helmet and spurs! For practicality’s sake he chose not to (I, along with the other groomsmen, wore a regular tuxedo).

Nobody regarded this as affected. It was, simply put, a magnificent display of masculine military splendor. It was the only wedding I ever attended where I felt like a real man was being married. My sister-in-law and the rest of our families were immeasurably proud. Afterward, my father presented my brother with our great-grandfather’s regimental sword, which was presented to him upon becoming an officer in 1905. This was a real sword that could be used as a weapon, and until the sixties was a part of formal wear for Army officers (the Canadian military was forcibly converted into a “peacekeeping” force in the sixties by the Soviet-admiring Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, who infamously skipped Canada for grad school at Harvard rather than serve in WW II). I have never spoken to my brother about that reception, but I suspect it gave him a far more tangible sign of the honor of his vocation, and a comfort that no matter how terrifying battle might be, his ancestors went through the same experience and conducted themselves with bravery. My great-grandfather led men into battle at Ypres; now my brother will do the same in Kandahar.

Of course, not every soldier will have this immediate sign of support from his family, both dead and living. But my point with this story is that we strip away plumage and ceremony at our peril. Without it, people cannot inspire themselves to heroism of any sort. In the army, it can literally put men’s lives in danger.

Rita writes:

I think the men who dress with no plumage pretend to be harmless but it’s an act. They can be cut-throat and probably very sneaky.

James P. writes:

Sheila says,

“It’s truly ironic how so many publications feature articles on women dressing successfully for their careers, and charitable organizations seek donations of suitable work attire for welfare mothers or high school drop outs entering the workforce, yet only men are counseled to dress in a casual, relaxed, informal manner.”

I work in Washington DC, which is an unusually formal town. What I see here is that the number of unprofessionally dressed women vastly exceeds the number of unprofessionally dressed men. So, if the men are being counseled to “dress down,” they are not doing it (their bosses won’t let them) – and the women are not being told to “dress up” (their bosses won’t make them). Ten years ago I worked in an office with a large number of young women and men, and the double standard there was glaringly obvious. The women got away with wearing things that would have gotten the men sent home in an instant. For example, the women could get away with wearing open-toed sandals and denim skirts, while the men were obliged to wear proper suits and ties. The only conclusion I could draw was that our supervisors – all of them older men – did not dare to rebuke the young women for failing to meet the proper standards, for fear of some sort of sexual harassment lawsuit or complaint.

My own view is that putting on the suit and tie has an important psychological effect. If one looks like a serious professional, then one feels like a serious professional and one acts like a serious professional. Conversely, if one does not look like a serious professional, then one does not feel like a serious professional or act like a serious professional.

I am tempted to argue that men are discouraged from wearing suits as a by-product of feminism. Men in suits and ties radiate power and prestige, but women cannot gain such an appearance of power and prestige, because women who wear suits and ties simply look ridiculous. Therefore, the solution, from the feminist standpoint, is to reduce the male appearance of power and prestige by discouraging them from wearing suits and by encouraging them to look as slovenly as possible. In this, as in so many other realms, if liberalism cannot build up the “underprivileged,” it seeks to tear down the “privileged.”

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