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posted by martyb on Friday May 26 2017, @02:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the optional-nerd-glasses dept.

Americans began the 20th century in bustles and bowler hats and ended it in velour sweatsuits and flannel shirts—the most radical shift in dress standards in human history. At the center of this sartorial revolution was business casual, a genre of dress that broke the last bastion of formality—office attire—to redefine the American wardrobe.

Born in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s, business casual consists of khaki pants, sensible shoes, and button-down collared shirts. By the time it was mainstream, in the 1990s, it flummoxed HR managers and employees alike. “Welcome to the confusing world of business casual,” declared a fashion writer for the Chicago Tribune in 1995. With time and some coaching, people caught on. Today, though, the term “business casual” is nearly obsolete for describing the clothing of a workforce that includes many who work from home in yoga pants, put on a clean T-shirt for a Skype meeting, and don’t always go into the office.

The life and impending death of business casual demonstrates broader shifts in American culture and business: Life is less formal; the concept of “going to the office” has fundamentally changed; American companies are now more results-oriented than process-oriented. The way this particular style of fashion originated and faded demonstrates that cultural change results from a tangle of seemingly disparate and ever-evolving sources: technology, consumerism, labor, geography, demographics. Better yet, cultural change can start almost anywhere and by almost anyone—scruffy computer programmers included.

The answer, apparently, is Nerds! NERDS!!


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 26 2017, @04:02PM (14 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday May 26 2017, @04:02PM (#516007) Journal

    I completely understand that attitude, though here's where I disagree: dress clothes (particularly men's dress clothes) don't ALWAYS have to be uncomfortable. I actually find them more comfortable in many situations unless I'm doing something physically strenuous. (Obviously when it's hot, that's also a problem if you're wearing a suit jacket or whatever, but that shouldn't generally be an issue in a climate-controlled office.) For example: denim is a harsh material, but people like to wear jeans as "casual" clothing all the time. But its benefit historically was its durability, which made it the choice of farmers, laborers, etc. Give me a nice pair of wool trousers, which "breathe" better and feel much nicer on the skin -- why would I want jeans?

    I could be completely wrong here, but I think one reason men say formal clothing is so uncomfortable is because it's ill-fitting. Few people go to tailors anymore (even just to have something bought off the rack fixed a bit). And for men who avoid "dressing up" regularly, putting on the dress shirt with tie is frequently an exercise in noticing how much your neck grew as you put on a few pounds from when you bought the shirt 5 years ago. Same thing with suit jackets or pants or whatever. If your collar is "choking" you or you can barely button your pants or your jacket is constraining you from crossing your arms properly, maybe it's not that the clothing style is uncomfortable -- you just need to buy clothes that fit you.

    Or you just go with the baggy jeans or cargo pants and the baggy shirt, and problem is solved.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday May 26 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Friday May 26 2017, @04:11PM (#516009) Journal

    I could be completely wrong here, but I think one reason men say formal clothing is so uncomfortable is because it's ill-fitting

    I think a lot of the difference is due to quality. A cheaply made t-shirt (even a poorly fitting one) is pretty comfortable. A decent shirt is more comfortable, but a poor-quality shirt is horrible to wear.

    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday May 26 2017, @04:30PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday May 26 2017, @04:30PM (#516015)

      This again just shows how men's formal clothes are utterly obsolete. Why bother with something where you have to spend a lot of money for something comfortable, when you can easily buy a cheaply made cotton t-shirt and it's very comfortable? Clearly, the materials and styles used in formal wear are simply obsolete and archaic, and have been surpassed by more modern alternatives.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday May 26 2017, @04:28PM (6 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday May 26 2017, @04:28PM (#516014)

    I hear this crap about "buying clothes that fit you" and getting your clothes custom-tailored every time these discussions about suits arise. There's a couple of problems with this:

    1) I'm not a billionaire, so I don't have money to hire someone to make custom-fit clothes for me. If I can't buy it off the rack and wear it as-is, then I'm not going to get it, it's as simple as that. If you want me to try custom-tailored clothing, you're welcome to send me a big wad of cash for that. This is just like telling someone who thinks car seats are uncomfortable that they just need to buy a Rolls-Royce.

    2) I don't seem to have this ill-fitting problem with casual clothes, and I don't have to resort to baggy fitting stuff either. My shirts (both collared polo shirts for work and uncollared shirts for more casual wear) fit me just fine, and my jeans fit me just fine too. With jeans, there's a huge array of sizes available, which does make it a little challenging to find the right size in a store, but online ordering is a lot easier once you've found the size that fits you well. They're not a perfect fit of course, especially in the waist, but that's what belts are for, and tailored pants require a belt too.

    I think the bottom line is that men's formal clothes are archaic hold-overs from the 1800s, and have been superseded technologically and stylistically by more modern clothing. They're made of poor-performing materials that require far too much maintenance and are not durable at all, unlike newer materials, so there's just no good reason to wear them unless you're doing a historical re-enactment or period dress festival or something like that. And the style decisions make no sense: you mention collars "choking" people, but that's a real thing. Why would you design a shirt so that the collar fastens over your throat at all? It's stupid. There's no reason for it at all, except pure stupidity. The throat is a sensitive place on most peoples' bodies, and many people can't stand any pressure on it at all, so why on earth would you design a shirt that intentionally places pressure--even the slightest amount--on that spot? My polo shirts have collars and they manage to stay well clear of my throat. And what's with those stupid buttons on the sleeves anyway? Idiotic adornments for no real purpose.

    And back to materials and maintenance: those stupid suits all need to be dry-cleaned. WhyTF would I buy something that's so expensive to just have cleaned, and requires such extraordinary measures, when I can just wear a cotton shirt and maybe a polyester jacket if it's cold, and toss them in the washing machine like everything else? If you want to go to extraordinary lengths with your everyday clothing because you like it so much, go right ahead, but asking other people to jump through all these hoops is asinine.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 26 2017, @04:44PM (1 child)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday May 26 2017, @04:44PM (#516019) Journal

      If you want to go to extraordinary lengths with your everyday clothing because you like it so much, go right ahead, but asking other people to jump through all these hoops is asinine.

      Did I ask anyone to jump through any hoops? I have no problem with anyone wearing whatever they want. And I completely agree with you about the convenience aspects. I was speaking only to the discomfort expressed in the prior post.

      As for myself, I personally don't wear shirt collars that "press" on my throat even when buttoned. The older style detached collar shirts actually didn't press AT all, because the shirts themselves typically had a sort of "crew neck" and the stiff collars would be clasped around them, often leaving a bit of a gap between neck and collar. Attached collared shirts just need to be chosen with the right neck size. As for fit, one doesn't have to have custom tailored clothing to make it comfortable. One can just buy baggier dress clothing. It may not look quite as nice, but you don't have to pay a mint for it. My point was mostly that people who don't "dress up" often frequently have closets full of stuff that doesn't really fit them anymore.

      Buttons on sleeves date from a time when "stretchy" materials didn't exist (well, the ones that did wouldn't hold their shape), so if you wanted a sleeve that fit more closely to your arm, you needed a clasp. For cotton or linen shirts or whatever today, they're still helpful, not an "idiotic adornment for no real purpose." (Oh if you're talking about buttons on suit jackets -- I agree with you. They date from a time when jackets too used to sometimes be buttoned at the end of a sleeve, but now they're generally useless and ornamental.)

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 26 2017, @05:16PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday May 26 2017, @05:16PM (#516037)

        Yeah, I was talking about the buttons on suit jackets there. But the buttons on long sleeve formal shirts suck too; we invented this stuff called "elastic" a long time ago that should have made those obsolete. My long-sleeve cotton casual shirts don't need buttons; I can easily push up the sleeves any time I want without fumbling with buttons.

        As for the collar thing, different people have different neck sizes, so that's why formal shirts have so many different sizes (it multiples the compatibility matrix). With something like a polo shirt, this isn't necessary because the collar doesn't fit near the throat, by design, because there's simply no reason to cover the throat. That's my whole point: why complicate things with an unnecessary requirement that serves no valid purpose? So with polo shirts, you just need sizes S, M, L, XL, and maybe XXL XXXL etc. for the obese people and maybe some special sizes at the big-n-tall store, but the vast majority of people are covered with 4 sizes, all because they don't worry about the neck size by simply having a collar that doesn't cover the throat.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 26 2017, @04:51PM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday May 26 2017, @04:51PM (#516022) Journal

      Also, I'll agree with you that the reasons a lot of stuff exists in formal clothing is now obsolete. For example, people used to button their collars partly because they were in Europe and it was COLD. The neck is a sensitive area, but it's also an area where a lot of body heat can escape. Before the era of effective central heating, buttoned collars thus had a purpose (also the reason for multilayered suits, etc.). I agree they don't really have one anymore. And I wouldn't claim they're more comfortable, but for me, if they fit well, I don't notice them at all when working.

    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday May 26 2017, @06:59PM

      by meustrus (4961) on Friday May 26 2017, @06:59PM (#516083)

      And what's with those stupid buttons on the sleeves anyway? Idiotic adornments for no real purpose.

      I've heard that the reason for those sleeve buttons is to keep the footmen from wiping their noses on their sleeves. I'm so glad to wear a vestige of paternalism directed at the lower classes.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:15AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:15AM (#516208) Journal

      It's an art to dodge the fashion sadists. (or perhaps terrorists?)

    • (Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:36AM

      by deadstick (5110) on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:36AM (#516250)

      The business suit is a badge of status. It says "I'm wearing an expensive, fragile outfit because I don't have to do any real work. Suck it."

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday May 26 2017, @05:09PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Friday May 26 2017, @05:09PM (#516032) Homepage Journal

    Fair enough, but "comfortable" is a matter of taste. I find jeans very comfortable, for example, but it may just be that I am used to them.

    Maintenance is also a factor. I can wear jeans for 2-3 days, assuming I didn't dump my lunch on them, and they look fine. With dress pants, which I had to wear for a previous job, I had to press them every day*, because otherwise they looked wrinkled.

    And cost. If you shop intelligently, you can get a good pair of jeans for $30 (Lands' End sale price, or similar), and you can wash them yourself. A good pair of woolen dress pants costs more, and has to be professionally cleaned. The costs add up over time.

    *Hint, for anyone who has to do this: buy a pants-press like hotels use, and just put your pants in overnight. It's worth it.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 26 2017, @06:23PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday May 26 2017, @06:23PM (#516063) Journal

    I would concur with that. A few jobs back I had to wear suits to work every day. It was a hassle to change out of my bike clothes to the suit (though I did have an office to change in). Once changed, the suits were really comfortable. If you buy suits made with good fabric, they can be more comfortable to wear than jeans and cotton t-shirts. Cheap suits, on the other hand, are ill-fitting, don't breathe, and chafe because the quality of the fabric is low.

    All things being equal I'd still rather dress casually because I don't have to worry so much about stains and damage, and because it's less hassle to throw them in the washer than to take them to the cleaners every week. But suits don't have to be the iron maidens many perceive them to be.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 26 2017, @10:30PM

    by sjames (2882) on Friday May 26 2017, @10:30PM (#516171) Journal

    That is a lot of the problem. It is a style that MUST be tailored if it is to be comfortable. Some people can get by with off the rack if they are close enough to average in all dimensions, but others will never be comfortable or even able to move freely with something off the rack.

    More casual styles are far more forgiving and so work OK off the rack.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:27AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:27AM (#516214) Journal

    Give me a nice pair of wool trousers, which "breathe" better and feel much nicer on the skin -- why would I want jeans?

    Cotton denim breath as good as wool. Speaking personally, I don't mind the feel of jeans on the skin (particularly after I wear them into the 3rd-4th week - grin).
    Why want jeans? Time/resources you need for maintenance - wool cloth is finicky in this regards.
    Jeans - throw them in the washing machine in one load, all 5 of them (the 6th is the one you wear), get them on the cloth line to dry, no need to iron them - and that's that for another 2 months. Try that with wool trousers.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:27PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:27PM (#516435)

    Let's not forget total cost of wearership... Blue jeans and T-shirts get tossed in the machines occasionally and are ready to wear. Wool slacks, pressed shirts, polished shoes all require significant maintenance to wear to work - this is time out of life, whether you subtract it from your "working" or "personal" hours, it is time out of life - more precious than whatever the monetary difference is.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]