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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: 1) by khallow on Friday May 26 2017, @06:43PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 26 2017, @06:43PM (#516074) Journal

    There's ugliness in the irony which asserts that the pinnacle of personal autonomy is by contradiction, accompanied by assuming the lowest common denominator in dress.

    I guess that's another example where beauty is uglier than ugliness. And let us note the LCD in dress is pretty comfortable and convenient to prepare. That scores big points with me.

    To be casual about such matters is a decline in the sensibility that makes up the redeeming fabric of a society. A decline in this sensibility, related to one's own comfort and convenience is a turn towards selfish preference, with no concession to fellows. It is anti-social.

    A decline which you'd be wise to embrace as you feel comfortable doing. As to the ridiculous claim of good clothes being "anti-social", let us look at an actual suit [wikipedia.org]. This has its own anti-social aspects. They look pretty, but they are useless for so many communal business activities like, for example, manual labor. Those useless flapping bits will catch on machinery and sharps. The tie in particular is a strangling hazard. The suit is way too stuffy for hot working environments. And you're one slip or spill from hundreds of dollars in cleaning bills even in the best of environments, much less the world most of us live in. In a business environment, it is a billboard stating that you don't do grungy work. That's pretty anti-social right there.

    I get that they have a useful social role as customer-facing uniform. Most parties expect to see sales people or executives in uniform (and sometimes dressing above expectations in such situations can be advantageous). It expedites business activities to have people dressed to expectation in a business suit, just like it does a fast food worker in their uniform.

    Another problem is that such clothes are relatively uncomfortable. A properly tailored suit can be good enough to be mostly unnoticeable, but it's never going to beat a decent open collar shirt and loose pants.