Well, that sounds like a great way to address performance issues.
As a consultant, I’ve had to wear suits in just about every job I’ve had. Quite frankly, it doesn’t make sense for me to get a bunch of $2000 suits to sit around in all day. It’s much more common to have one nice suit for interviewing and client meetings and a couple of sturdy workhorse suits from Mens Warehouse. Personally, I would rather just get a mid-range suit for a reasonable price and spend the money on tailoring and nice shirts and ties.
I find that it is a pretentious affectation to make people wear suits to work in this day and age. Many of the companys where I had to wear suits were small dot-com management consulting firms that hired mostly kids and wanted to appear bigger than they were (similar to the goons at JT Marlin).
Believe me, I agree - I offer my observation from being the *receiving end * of this type of comment. I would never tell this to anyone myself, unless there was a need to have a conversation with a brand new person who never had to dress for work. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
I wear khaki’s and a button-down shirt to work most days, but my $3000-suit-wearing CFO periodically makes comments that I need to wear suits. I am not a wet-behind-the-ears noob in the business world and this stuff still happens to me, which is why I am sensitive to the fact that there is often more to it than appears…
IIRC, Charlie Sheen’s character gets told “Get a new suit, you can’t come in here looking like that” when Gordon Gecko takes him to lunch (I remember the steak tartar). The implication being that if you’re going to be out and about and meeting with clients you need to wear the expensive suits. Charlie Sheen wasn’t going to be in the boiler room environment anymore once he got the Gecko contact.
Already answered, but button-down collars are much more informal than a straight collar (and even these come in a variety of styles - spread, tab, etc.).
Too funny - as a matter of fact, I just got another one of these “peer pressure” comments about one of my hats. My band had a gig over the weekend and a friend from work came - she mentioned that her boss was thinking about coming simply so she could see my in my beret (it isn’t a beret - it’s a flipped-around flat cap, but I digress…).
If you knew her boss - a very high-powered exec with a shoe collection to rival Imelda Marcos - you would understand that there was a snide tone in her comment; basically she is amused that I have my little band and wear my little hat…sigh
This isn’t my experience either and I work in a large corporate firm in the Wall Street area.
The lawyers at my firm generally wear the standard conservative suit-and-tie ensemble. Granted, if they’re not seeing clients, the jacket tends to come off and the tie gets loosened pretty quickly, but never so far that it couldn’t be restored to full conservative suit-and-tie-ensemble glory in a jiffy. I can only think of one attorney I’ve ever seen in the office who was wearing khakis and a polo shirt - and he’s, well, a special case.* I see a lot of them in suit-slacks and a nice tailored shirt with or without a tie - but always the sort of look you get when the person wore their full-on suit to the office this morning and has been nibbling away at the least-comfortable bits for a couple of hours, if you see what I mean. The sort of thing that just screams “I can be fully suited up in less than 5 minutes and you’d never know it!”.
The female attorneys all wear the girl version of the standard conservative suit-and-tie look in some iteration. Hose, pumps, tailored pantsuit or skirt suit. They have a little more leeway - but mostly only because there’s a little more flexibility with the girl version of the standard conservative suit-and-tie look.
Even when the retired and semi-retired partners and counsel come into the office, they still wear the conservative suit-and-tie ensemble. And in most cases they’re only coming into the office to have lunch with old friends.
And our office is ostensibly “business-casual”. The polos and khakis thing just isn’t done, at least by the attorneys. Most of the support staff does it, though.
*For starters, he’s a specialist (domestic and international tax ramifications of mergers and acquisitions). Also, he’s in permanent advancement limbo (too valuable to get the nudge out the door at year-eight like the associates, but they don’t want to make him a partner because they have enough tax partners). There’s not a chance he could get fired - he’s too good, and he’s the principal assistant of the head of the tax department, who is an epically huge pain in the ass to work for (I should know, he’s my boss, too). Even he wears the suit-and-tie deal if he’s going to be meeting clients in the flesh, though. In fact, I keep an eye on his wardrobe to know whether or not there are client meetings planned because my boss is abyssmal at letting me know these things in advance. Polo shirt = no in-the-flesh meetings, tie = I can expect clients in the office.
The managing partners at the firm I worked for once asked an associated, who was wearing a brown suit, to “Please tell me in advance when you’re having vacation.” The associate was completely dumbfounded and didn’t know what he was talking about. The partner said, “Well, you’re wearing a brown suit aren’t you?” The implication being that you DO NOT wear brown suits to work.
Mr. Gibson was an impeccable dresser and also had the balls to mark up a copy of “The Elements of Style” and send it to E. B. White with a note, “I found a few errors you may wish to correct in later editions.”
Okay, but I’d assume Wall Street and Manhattan (what the other poster said) would have significantly different law firm “cultures” than Orlando, Florida, even though I work at some of the larger firms around here.
I’m a girl, but I grew up watching my dad wear suits to work every day. He was an executive vice president, and when I went to his office I could sure tell the difference between his suits and his hirelings’ suits. Tailoring, mostly. It’s only when you get to be Donald Trump that you can wear whatever you want.
My dad mostly didn’t have suits tailored for him, but when he went to Hong Kong on business he came home with six or seven custom tailored suits that looked very nice. Seriously, you’d actually save money even factoring in the plane ticket and hotel stay. Labor costs are much cheaper in other countries, many of which are known for their fabric skills. I know Navy guys used to come home with a bunch of sharp suits bespoke in Asia.
I see this has morphed into a thread on contemporary businesswear. Suits me.
In the NE Ohio legal community, suits are very commonly worn, but I’ve never seen any snobbiness over it. If the suit fits and isn’t of an obviously El Cheapo polyester shine, you’re good to go. I once heard of a crusty older judge who threw a female attorney out of his courtroom because she was wearing a pantsuit and not a dress or a matching skirt and jacket, but that’s very unusual. I expect lawyers appearing before me to be in a suit or sportscoat and tie, but I’ll accept the explanation (which I’ve occasionally heard) that the guy’s wearing, say, a polo shirt and a windbreaker because he was sent to court on very short notice that day by his firm.
I remember in one of William Manchester’s books that JFK once remarked that “no one wears button-down shirts [to work] anymore.” Even back then, straight-collar shirts were clearly the dressier alternative. I wear button-down shirts pretty often, but with my nicer suits a straight collar is the way to go.
Oh boy, I feel a lot out of my depth here, and I am not making any knowledgeable claims as to suits, but I will gulp and take a deeeep breath and throw out something a very well-respected someone told me once that I have never forgotten and it does seem to have stood be in good stead.
(…stood me in good stead…?? Where did I get THAT from??)
Anyway, he said that I should not worry about the class/quality/name brand of a suit. What counted was that people I met with back then did NOT notice my suit. That is, it should fit, sleeves not too short or too long, the collar should NOT ride up on my neck if I leaned back or put an arm over a chair, or bulge at the buttons, etc.
In other words it should fit perfectly. He said I’d get more wear out of the quality suits, but really, I’d be better off getting a suit of good quality wool and having a tailor custom-alter it to fit me. He also said to be careful; some suits were beyond redemption from the get-go.
The other thing he told me is once you have the coat’s sleeve length correct, make sure I also had the shirt sleeve length correct, so just the right amount of sleeve showed.
Just as a side note, as to how crazy this gets, Hart Shaffner & Marx suits fit me very well, but no one has yet managed to get their collar to lay correctly for me. This is a decently respected suit, but I can not get one with a collar that can be fitted to me correctly.
Most don’t, but there is that strata of image conscious ‘players’ who will. That is what Gekko was implying, that Bud Fox was rising into that strata.
Jos A Banks and JC Penney aren’t that far apart, except that you’ll get better service from Banks. Both are serviceable for everyday needs.
Don’t mix-up stockbrokers with investment bankers. Having worked with both, investment bankers, by far, have more preening, image-conscious egomaniacs amongst their numbers.
The top scam artists in Boiler Room are Gordon Gekko-wannabes. That is why they would parrot the line, not because they need to dress well to steal people’s money (which is what their investments do). Gekko is an egomaniac, and wants people to know he’s ‘better’ than the rabble, and he wants his syncophants to be the same. There are some egomaniacs in the business at or near that level - I’ve met 2 and they are not pleasant people.
George Washington wore a brown suit at his first inauguration in 1789. Of course, fashions have changed just a bit since then. I agree that brown suits are, in general, regarded as “hick fashion” by clotheshorses/metrosexuals nowadays.
My old managing director (before he quit) was a suit and tie guy. Except he always wore these ill-fiting suits that made him look like a kid playing dress-up. Whenever he would surprise me with a client meeting, he would be like “go borrow a tie and jacket from someone”. It’s like how does wearing a mismatched tie and someone elses jacket going to make me look more professional? How about tell me ahead of time and I’ll come to work in a proper suit. Otherwise, I’ll wearing what I’m wearing which should look pretty sharp anyway. Fortunately he quit and ran some other firms practice into the ground.
He also wore a wig and a three-point hat.
Brown isn’t that great a color of suit to wear. I tend to think it makes you look like a copier repairman. I would stick with dark grey or blue.
Actually neither at his inauguration. Washington didn’t wear a wig late in life (although many fashionable men of the era did), and he was bare-headed during the ceremony. But your point about changing fashions is well-taken.
