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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!!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday May 26 2017, @04:28PM (6 children)
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)
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
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
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
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
It's an art to dodge the fashion sadists. (or perhaps terrorists?)
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:36AM
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."