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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: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 26 2017, @06:24PM (9 children)
What you wear, how you present yourself, can also demonstrate how you want to impress upon others how you are somehow better than they are. More important, etc.
With enough examples I have learned to recognize that necktie screams I'M THE IDIOT!
Where I started, in '82, it was suits and ties for software developers. (Called "programmers" at the time.) (That's nineteen eighty two) By '84 it was blue jeans and polo shirts. By '87 it was blue jeans and t-shirts. And everyone wore the same. Higher level people would wear a suit on days when they would meet with important people. But it was just fine for them to bring around people and introduce them to everyone else wearing jeans and t-shirts. It is like that to this day, but the important people, generally, don't wear jackets or neckties anymore.
Welcome to where the nerds work. The people who actually make the things the rest of society seems to like to much.
People that think this way are probably not the people who think about code or solving new types of problems.
I don't optimize for appearance -- after all I don't have to look at myself.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday May 26 2017, @07:41PM (7 children)
I generally look at it from the opposite side. That dressing formally around you shows respect for *you*. If I think I'm better than you, why do I care what I wear around you? If I think I'm better than you, I don't care what you think. As such, dressing way down to be around you is a clear sign that I don't respect you.
No offense meant, but someone being concerned about the quality of another person's dress as compared with your own strongly implies insecurity and a feeling of inferiority on the part of that person.
I can imagine that some folks might dress more formally in an effort to make them feel better about themselves (whether at the expense of others or not), but that's also a signal of insecurity/feelings of inferiority to me. But it's your choice as to whether or not you're affected by that person's sartorial choices.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday May 26 2017, @08:19PM (2 children)
We may just have a different POV on this. People who dress in a suit and tie, to me, signals that they are inferior and don't know it. It is a prejudice. A learned one. I don't feel inferior in the least. I am quite confident in the work I do and my ability to do it. I am also quite confident in the suit's inability to understand it. Fortunately, the people who once wore suits, generally don't.
The suit says to me that this person lives in a whole different world and is out of touch with the world I live in.
It may mean something different to you, but I think this POV is a small minority. Or, it is the suit's POV, from, as I said, a whole different world than the nerds live in.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday May 26 2017, @09:34PM (1 child)
I'm not a "nerd" per se. I am a technologist and an engineer. I am a lover of science and technology and I (at least I do my best) modulate my beliefs views based on empirical evidence.
I don't subscribe to the idea that what you wear or what your job or hobbies may be defines you as a person. It certainly doesn't define me.
I'm just a human, with my own quirks and peccadilloes. I think that making broad generalizations about the quality of a person based upon external attributes, while a popular pastime, is an inferior mechanism for assessing others.
I don't immediately reject as "other" someone wearing a suit, nor do I do so for people wearing their baggy jeans around their knees. Just as I don't make assumptions about the quality or intentions of others based upon their skin color, language or place of birth.
In my mind, each individual is worthy of simple human respect, regardless of external indicators, unless and until they prove themselves to be unworthy of such respect.
That said, this is what I think and believe. I do no demand or expect this from others. Each individual needs to decide for themselves how to deal with others.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:58PM
I think I said somewhere here that my view of suits is a bias, a prejudice. Just the reverse of people who think nerds should wear suits, or even dress up. I optimize for comfort. I have specific goals (business goals) to accomplish.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:34PM (2 children)
So in other words, people who dress formally show their respect towards me by dressing up in a way that I find intimidating and unnatural. Gee.. thanks, I guess?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:33AM (1 child)
Perhaps that says more about you than it does about other people, regardless of their apparel?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @01:14PM
Perhaps but perhaps I'm not alone there. Perhaps there's a reason why people started dressing casually at work.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:30AM
In my experience, it has mostly to do with tradition and background.
"The suits" do it, because they always have. It's what their superiors did/do, and it's what their superiors expect them to do around them. The basic message is: if you want to move up the chain, dress like the people above you. And, like turtles all the way down, it used to be suits all the way up.
There are exceptions everywhere, and I definitely have been in a room where "dressing down" was a power play by the man at the top - he didn't wear ties, and his staff made sure to tell even visitors to not go "suit" around him - in this way he put lots of people out of their comfort zone by wearing jeans and plain shirts.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday May 26 2017, @07:57PM
Your thoughts remind me about going to a Windows vs. OS/2 "shoot out" in 1994 or so where IT folks from a bunch of large financial institutions were invited to see presentations from both IBM and Microsoft about their new (Windows NT and OS/2 Warp) offerings.
I (and the colleagues who attended with me) were amused to see that while the Microsoft presentation team donned dark suits and strove to be serious (which is, presumably, how they imagined their audience), the IBM presentation team was in jeans, polos and t-shirts and tried to be "exciting" and dynamic during their presentation.
At the time, we thought it interesting that both Microsoft and IBM were trying to turn perceptions about them (Microsoft as the young, "hip" upstart, and IBM as the staid, venerable "blue-chip" companies) on their heads, as in each case they thought it might improve their standing with the audience.
We didn't care about any of that. We were interested in the technology. But it was quite amusing to watch.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr