Clothes Make the Business Person
Let’s talk about Casual Friday.
Sounded good when I first heard about it when I was working at Cotton Incorporated.
It was the brainchild of a textile marketing executive.
The idea was to get everyone to think wearing cotton clothing at work was cool and businesslike.
That was important because most money was going to buy formal wear and work clothing appropriate to the work being done and that was predominantly made from manmade fibers like rayon and polyester.
It started off slow but, as you can see by looking around you, men don’t wear ties and women don’t wear suits.
We see a lot of sweatshirts, sweaters, cotton flannel button shirts, polo shirts and others. Beyond the type of fiber used to make the clothing other things changed too. Look around a second time and see all those folks with their shirts hanging out? Not buttoned all the way up? Disheveled pants – either jeans, khakis or chinos. What these pants all have in common is they are usually called ‘slacks’.
Slack pants and fabrics really do match the meanings that are being conveyed in these pants category for work. Slacks are related to the idea of being unhurried.
The idea being conveyed by the marketing is that people who dress in relaxed pants are lazy because they worked so hard before you saw them. That, of course, is not true. The pants look lazy and they are communicating the real modern atmosphere of the American workplace – specifically the offices.
It used to amuse me to look at executives walking around the offices wearing jeans, loose sweaters and full shirts underneath with shirttails hanging out.
It doesn’t amuse me anymore. These people are conveying the image that they achieve work effortlessly and in an unhurried way that indicates they are superior. So hard work, work that needs to be done at speed and is of utmost importance should, by definition, never be given to them, yet, it is.
See then the result of this behavior and the unfortunate intimate negative impact it is has had on American culture, the work ethic and results.
Along with sloppy dressing comes sloppy living and from sloppy living comes sloppy thinking and ultimately sloppy results.