Casual Fridays

by Dennis Green

There’s an interesting theory abroad that “business casual” dress in the office has undermined our culture and our values as a civilization. These pundits ignore the fact that American workers, especially in Silicon Valley, are more far more innovative and productive in the past 30 years — U.S. productivity up 70% since 1979, while wages have risen only 26% — than in all the years before that.

Steve Jobs is often mentioned as the paragon of casual dress for success — in his Levis and turtleneck sweaters and running shoes. Such apparel is ubiquitous in technology firms like Apple and Google, at Lucas Films and Skywalker Sound. And it marks a cultural shift, indeed, but not the one deplored by fusty old conservatives.

It isn’t simply that casual dress is more comfortable than suit and tie, but that many of us, especially in more creative fields, distrust the Suits, regard them as phonies, authoritarian, emblematic of an Establishment of another time. Their uniforms, their conformity, the “Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” syndrome — all reek of narrow-mindedness.

Someone gave me a subscription once to GQ Magazine, thinking I would enjoy the fiction and maybe even submit to the editors some of my own. I was appalled by the conformity — of the clothing, of the ideas, of the snarky tone of voice that permeated the magazine. My God! You pick up any woman’s magazine, and no two women look or sound or seem to think alike.

What’s wrong with my gender, anyhow? In a recent exchange among readers of Reason Magazine, (a Libertarian pub), we saw the following: “I don't get it. Dockers are no more comfortable than ‘dress pants,’ and unless you don't know how to size your shirts, buttoned collars with a knotted tie shouldn't feel any more restrictive than anything else. (The only thing that would actually be quantifiably more comfortable would be shorts, but I sure as hell don't want to look at my colleagues like that.) So suck it up and put on a tie you goddam hippies.”

So there it is, the great cultural divide, the old (or young) fogey telling us to just get with the program. And like most bullies, he sounds very insecure. But I also suspect that he regards himself as a paragon of male virtue, the very embodiment of what it means to be a man.

But no more. “Free to be you, free to be me” applies to us all, not just women and little children.

I quit being a wage slave in 1981, started my own business, and never looked back. And a big part of what I left behind was the dress code. Like Jobs, I adopted turtlenecks and open collared shirts, often under a leather jacket or corduroy sport coat, or even velour. But I also grew a beard and gladly gave up the necktie, the noose. I stopped going to corporate lynchings and “necktie parties” at about the same time.

And in the new culture, in the world of entrepreneurs, your skills and creative abilities, your knack for connecting with clients and “users,” is much more important than appearing in the uniform of the supposed professional, “Sharp Dressed Man.” Sometimes, thinking outside the Suit is even more important than getting outside the box. Or, as Warren Buffett says, “What box?”

If dress is really all about costuming, and self-expression, or adopting a new persona, then it might be true that more innovative people will find costuming that is a little off the standard stage set. Even Sgt. Pepper wore those uniforms only for the album cover photo shoot!

©2010 Dennis Green