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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 AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 26 2017, @05:15PM (2 children)
Effort. Upkeep. Cost. Status shifts.
(1) Cost. People used to invest a lot more of their budgets in clothing, even among lower classes. (Average family budget in 1900 spent ~15% on clothing, still around ~12% in 1950, now that's more like 4%.) Even middle-class folks a few generations ago would frequently consult tailors to get well-made clothes or to make alterations to stuff they bought off the rack. That all shifted radically with the flow of cheap imported mass-produced clothing, available in many styles and sizes "close enough" that people could buy a lot more for a lot less.
(2) Upkeep and effort. Cheap clothes had many radical effects. For prior generations, clothing was precious because it was expensive. Collars and cuffs on shirts were detachable not only because they were easier to clean, but also because they wear the fastest. Tailors used to "turn" collars or replace cuffs for extra life on a shirt, but once shirts became cheap enough, why not buy a new one? I have strong memories of my great-grandmother sitting around "darning socks." Why bother when a new pack is available for a couple bucks? Just throw the old stuff out.
So casual clothing was no longer thought of as requiring maintenance. Formal clothing thus becomes a strange outlier in upkeep -- the stuff you still need to iron, take to the cleaners, hang up so it maintains its shape, perhaps have retailored over time. In an era when most clothing becomes cheap, disposable, and able to be thrown in the automatic washing machine, formal clothing suddenly seems annoying to deal with.
And let's not forget the social shifts caused by women entering the workforce. TFA makes the point that the absence of women in "nerd" cultures may have allowed a greater informality. That may be true, but women in general were working in ever greater numbers during this shift. My grandmother used to iron my grandfather's shirts and pants for work almost daily, starching the collars, etc. -- even though (frankly) she typically avoided housework when she could. But she viewed it as a standard duty: and my grandfather was a machinist, not some office worker. But he wore a button-down collared shirt every day, and pressed trousers (never jeans or anything that casual).
Who has time to press shirts and pants, starch collars, etc.? It was a standard household activity, but women increasingly were occupied in their own jobs. New materials made it easier to avoid these treatments for most "casual" clothing, so why wouldn't people prefer it?
(3) Status. Lastly, there was a radical shift in status symbols over this time period. Having "proper clothes" that were well-maintained used to be viewed an essential element for social status. Fashion still obviously plays a role nowadays in status, but it's more about "individuality" even in middle and lower classes than having the standard boring formal clothes of yesteryear. I remember this scene from Balzac's novel Pere Goriot, where a student who is attempting to be a social "climber" struggles to afford to maintain his appearance with his clothes. He worries about whether he can afford to pay for a cab to get to a social engagement, because he's worried that his shoes and pants will become spattered on his walk. He can't pay, so he has to stop along the way to have his boots blackened and his trousers brushed. There's a huge amount of discussion devoted in that novel to the amount of attention people paid to dress in social situations, particularly on things like upkeep.
We don't demand that anymore. A slightly wrinkled shirt is okay. Collars don't have to be starched. Trousers don't need a firm crease (if any at all). Shoes don't need a perennial gleaming shine. Some of those shifts were well underway before "business casual" became common.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by bob_super on Friday May 26 2017, @06:23PM
"How do you know he's the King?'
"He doesn't have shit all over him"
Since we now have a president who tapes his tie and shoves other heads of state out of his way to reach the front row, we can say that elegance and formality are on the decline.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 27 2017, @11:47AM