Why the suit?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m sure this has been asked and answered many a time, but today I am required to don the monkey suit for a dog-and-pony show for the muckety mucks, and the temps in the high 80s made me wonder yet again exactly who is it that gives a damn whether anyone else is wearing a jacket and tie?

I cannot imagine any business or professional relationship I would have with anyone in which I would give a shit whether or not they were wearing a suit. Yeah, I’d like most folks I deal with to be neatly dressed wearing clothes that fit and are clean and in good repair. But when I’m doing business with someone ALL I care about is the quality of their work. And as far as first impressions go, when I see someone wearing a jacket and tie in the summer, I’m not impressed. To the contrary, I think they are either stupid or otherwise lacking, thinking that their costume gives them some kind of advantage instead of focussing on the quality of their work.

Oh well, I’m sure I will be able to type and answer the phone better than usual since I’m uncomfortable and incurring dry cleaning bills! Of course, my office is usually like an icebox, and today - after the weekend - the AC seems to be having trouble getting going! :mad:

2

I can see an attorney (or a defendant!) wearing one in court, where following rules and showing respect for the law, as embodied by a judge, is important.

The only time I wear one to something like work is when I’m up on stage for a plenary in front of 1500 people. We have a fancy plenary (multiple screens, flowers, the works) and I think it adds to the atmosphere.

Aside from that, I don’t see it. I don’t wear one when I give papers anymore, and if I wore one talking to our CEO (which I don’t) he’d look at me as if I were nuts.

3

Sorry, a slight quibble. In my experience “monkey suit” is reserved for formal attire, such as tuxedo or even white tie, top hat and tails.

Interestingly (to me only, probably) what we now think of as a suit was called a “lounge suit” in Victorian times, and was considered suitable for casual wear. A business suit was much more buttoned up, with a stiff collar and more formal necktie. And of course they popped into formal wear at the drop of a hat.

As for me, I have been blessedly free of the necessity of wearing a suit to work for most of my working life. I had a few suits once, but I outgrew them (that’s right, I grew taller in my 40’s :wink: ) and gave them away. I now have one suit, and one sportcoat, and a number of slacks. I have never worn the suit that I own.
Roddy

4

This opens a big can of worms for discussion.

Supposed you went to an accountant to get your taxes done. It’s going to cost you, but you’ve got some sophisticated problems with a rental property and need a real pro. He shows up in shorts and a T-shirt. You thought he was the gardener. What would you think?

People wear different things to different places to make a statement about how they perceive and respect the occasion. An English friend of mine got married about 15 years ago and on his request I wore a morning suit. I wasn’t even a groomsman, just an attendee. This showed respect for my friend and the solemnity of the occasion. (OTOH I went to a beach wedding once, a whole different kettle of fish. I went barefoot, but that was the effect that the couple were going for.)

When people go to the beach they wear bathing suits. Damn, a bathing suit is comfortable. Do you wear one to work with the temps in the high 80’s? Yeah, I would love to go to the office in a bathing suit, flip-flops, no shirt, and a six-pack of cold ones. C’mon, people are just supposed to care about my work, right?

Some women have bathing suits that show more skin than their underwear, but would they wear their underwear to the beach? No, because it makes a statement that “I am dressed in a way that only someone I’m intimate with should see.”

Flip-flops are a big issue. Remember when the women’s lacrosse team from Northwestern met President Bush and were criticized for wearing flip-flops? A thoughtless lack of respect (even if they really didn’t mean it that way).

Since the advent of “casual Friday” there has a been a minor backlash after people started noticing, “Hey, when I’m dressed up a little more at work, I feel a little more serious about my work, have a little more of an edge, and do better work with more focus.”

You hear this kind of sophomoric philosophical discussion among, well, sophomores, as to “Why does anyone care what we wear?” But as people mature a little more, they start to understand that though appearance doesn’t tell anyone how smart you are or how good your work is, it does say something about your attitude. The way that some people dress is a way to say, “I’m here to get down to business,” but for others it’s just a way to raise a middle finger to the rest of the world.

5

Actually they’re still called lounge suits, at least over this side of the pond. So, for instance, a more casual wedding in the British sense might specify ‘lounge suits’ so people know not to turn up in ‘morning suits’ (tails etc), and a corporate cocktail party might specify lounge suits so people know not to turn up in dinner suits (tux in US speak).

For the record, and considering the paraphenalia us women are expected to don on certain occasions, I regard men who bitch about having to wear the odd suit as frankly childish.

6

In 28 years in the computer business, always working for A list companies, I’ve seen no correlation between level of dress and the quantity and quality of work. Besides maintaining some level of decency (which has not seemed to ever been a problem) the guys wearing shorts do just as good work and are just as motivated as the guys wearing khakis. Suits are worn by a statistically insignificant number of people. What people are comfortable with makes far more of a difference.
You should visit Silicon Valley and see if you still believe this stuff.

7

Well, even tho my job has casual all-the-time (except when the big bosses are in town), that doesn’t mean shorts and a T-shirt. I would have absolutely no problem having my taxes done by an accountant wearing a polo shirt and khakis, or even a nice pair of jeans. Heck, if it was a nice, clean, well-fitting T-shirt, that might not even catch my attention. And if they guy came with good enough references/track record, I wouldn’t care about shorts, T-shirt, flip flops, whatever. All I expect of my accountant/lawyer/doctor/plumber/gardener is that they provide high quality services. If I have to be in their presence for any extended period of time, I require acceptable hygiene, but that’s about it.

I seriously am having difficulty coming up with a single situation where I would care whether the individual I was seeing was wearing a suit and tie - or a business dress/suit and hose for women - as opposed to something more comfortable/practical. Heck, if they wish to wear a suit, that is certainly their prerogative. But it wouldn’t make any difference to me and, as I said, it wouldn’t give me any different perception about their ability to perform their function.

Moreover, if I see someone voluntarily someone wearing a shirt fastened to their neck and a jacket in 85+ temps, I question their common sense.

8

I suggest an off-white seersucker, white shoes and a Panama hat. That’ll just scream “cool, yet professional.” Snicker. Don’t forget the dark glasses. :cool:

9

And yet appearance obviously still matters to you…

It wouldn’t be enough to just wear a t-shirt that covers enough skin, it has to be a “nice, clean, well-fitting” one? And the t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops are acceptable so long as they have a “good enough” stack of references?

But what about the individuals on the threshhold of a “good enough” set of references? Apparently now these completely unimportant and superficial characteristics have become perfectly substantial.

I don’t wear nice or “formal” clothing to convince people I’m the messiah returned, simply ensure them that I have a professional attitude. If I’m on the edge of any judgement, I feel it’s likely to help me. I wouldn’t advise wearing a suit to work at Google, but I’m pretty confident that someone in nice slacks and a polo won’t last very long or make it very far at Goldmann-Sachs.

10

I was having a discussion about that with someone back when that happened, and I happened to describe it almost exactly the way you did here. They leaped to defend the girls, explaining that they didn’t mean it, that they just were doing what came naturally, blah, blah, blah, to which I responded, “Yes, that’s what thoughtless means. They didn’t think about it. Meeting a high government official is something you should give a little thought to.”

11

Don’t forget the tar and feathers.

We don’t have royalty and nobility in this country, and I like it that way.

12

Thanks to XKCD, I’m just going to let that be.

13

So do I.

We also have an unfortunately large number of people who do not understand that their convenience is not the only important factor in a given situation, and that I don’t care for as much.

Regards,
Shodan

14

Suits are awesome, I wear tweed suits, with vests and ties, frequently in the fall and winter for no reason other than because I like the way they look. I also like drinking Scotch and smoking cigarettes, and I like rooms that have wood paneling on the walls. In a lot of ways I wish we could return to the 1940s aesthetic in America. But that’s just one of my personal idiosyncrasies and I realize that my views are shared by a very small number of people.

15

I’ll call your 28 and raise you a year, but my experience has been in the DC area. You should do federal contracting and see if your perspective is expanded…I didn’t say that there is a correlation between appearance and competence, I am just talking about people’s perceptions. Silicon Valley is not representative of society as a whole; the tech industry is skewed with people who don’t care so much about their appearance, plus their work is reasonably easy to evaluate objectively.

Well, of course, I can hand pick any number of people who don’t care. But I’m describing society as a whole. There will always be individuals who don’t care at all what people wear, and people who care way too much–I have met a couple of very shallow people who are obsessed with they wear and comparing themselves to others constantly, to the point of nearly spending themselves into bankruptcy.

Even though appearance is physically superficial it is an important part of communicating in civilized society and that’s way people like John Molloy can make lots of money writing books about it.

16

I really wonder how many guys know that a lot of women think that a guy in a nice suit looks really goddamned nice. God, when my fiance puts his suit and tie on instead of the usual pants and polo/tshirt with buttondown, whooboy! :: fans self ::.

17

This question hits close to home for me. My best friend died last month and since I didn’t own a suit I felt compelled to buy one for the service.
My mother asked me why? “Your friends aren’t the suit going types.”
Thanks for the understanding mother.

18

The simple reason people wear suits or professional attire is that there is more to a business than simply writing good computer code. It’s the same reason companies spend money on corporate logos, fancy headquarters or television advertising. It’s part of an overall branding and marketing effort to portray the company in a way that is favorable to their potential customer base. ie lawyers and investment bankers WANT to look stuffy, conservative and thus dependable. Silicon Valley startup guys want to look like free thinking rebels.

When I worked for a dot-com consulting firm in Boston back in the 90s, I used to ask why we had to wear suits every day when we spent our days cramped in a development center writing code. The short answer is that when Fortune 1000 executives walk through the building, we don’t want to portray an image of dozens of 22 year old kids in skateboarding shoes building their mission critical web apps. A few months later, however, we ended up going to a more casual attire.

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense though. When I worked at a Big-4 consulting firm in Manhattan, we wore business casual - usually black dress pants and a blue shirt. And yet for some reason when we were at one client at a Hartford insurance company, we had to wear suits, even though the client dressed mostly in buscas clothes from Target.

19

I’ve done most my work in an academic environment where there’s no dress code, so the idea of one’s clothes determining one’s work ethic or trustworthiness is a foreign idea to me.

As a culture we demand people dress up for certain occasions for no reason other than that’s just what we’re used to. Fortunately, the trend is becoming more casual. 100 years ago, getting dressed just for a casual stroll was a huge ordeal. 50 years ago, one couldn’t venture outside without wearing a hat. And 50 years from now we’ll find our current standards of dressiness rather quaint. I can’t wait.

20

I can wait.

Sometimes I watch episodes of Jeeves and Wooster just to look at the men’s suits.