Office Dress Codes Need to Go.
If you happened to be wandering around Bournemouth train station in the UK at any workday morning between 8 – 9 AM around 2017, you would have caught a sight of a dazed, perhaps even intoxicated, figure ambling cluelessly somewhere --- you′d try and guess that somewhere to be either work or a funeral. Given the monochromatic outfit emitting intense melancholy vibes, you would have leaned towards the latter.
And as Kamala Harris would say, that little guy… was ME.
But the answer is: work. Every workday, I would be dressed in a standard black-and-white suit when going to the office where I would be surrounded by colleagues dressed in similar depressing outfits, sitting on black chairs in front of white desks. If we were on a reality TV show, everyone would mistake it to be filmed in the 60s when colour televisions were yet to be popularised.
Around 11:45 AM, a Pleasantville phenomenon would occur whereby some colour would enter our greyscale world in the form of a woman who was known as “The Sandwich Lady”. She would come in a rainbow of colours and trot around with her trolley of sandwiches, which always somehow seemed to complement her outfits.
On one particular day, I looked at her, drinking in the plethora of colours she had worn that day: lemon yellow with avocado green, hints of burgundy blended beautifully with turquoise… all of this put a wide smile on my face, which she instantly returned in a wider size. We continued to smile for a long time until she realized I was more interested in her fashion than the overpriced sandwiches, and then she stormed away with a grunt.
As I watched the colour leave the office, I found myself asking with seething anger, “Why can′t all of us enjoy fashionable freedom like the sandwich lady?!”.
So, I quit my job.
Kidding.
It didn′t quite happen like that. I am, however, now in a place where there is no dress-code and thus, no longer have to force myself into a black-and-white costume of baggy trousers and bland shirts.
I am in China, where fashionable freedom in business environments is more of a norm than an exception and, my god, there are no limits – I have seen high-level executives confidently stroll into the office in their morning pyjamas, geeky developers in Dolce and Gabanna, and fashion-forward accountants who look as if they′ve just come straight from a Vogue fashion shoot. Every morning, the office corridors would convert into a catwalk showcasing trendy styles that range from sophisticated pairings to bold choices that say, “I am so hungover”.
This is the way to be.
Dress-codes stifle creativity and limit self-expression, something that is not tolerated in the modern age where the millennials rule the stage. Making up majority of today′s workforce, millennials greatly differ from the boomers and along with placing importance on work-life balance and digitalisation, they are big fans of self-expression. In fact, 33% of millennials said they would go as far as quitting their job if they had to follow a conservative dress code. That′s right. Quitting their jobs. With that in mind, it would be perfectly reasonable for that 33% if I wrote the previous section like this:
As I watched the colour leave the office, I found myself asking with seething anger, “Why can′t all of us enjoy fashionable freedom like the sandwich lady?!”.
So, I quit my job.
No kidding.
For a country that′s known to be rather conservative, China′s corporate dress-code policies are surprisingly liberal. With Gen Z entering the workforce, it′s only a matter of time until formal office wear is globally eradicated for good.
Mwhaha.
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