I need a new suit. Usually a blazer or sports coat is as formal as I get for dress-up social occasions or the opera, but I have one good suit for weddings and funerals. I had not worn the suit in a couple of years, and when I put it on for a friend’s funeral recently I found some moth damage. (Moths in the New Mexico desert? Who knew?)
It’s probably the first suit I haven’t worn out. For decades I put on a suit (or at least a jacket and tie) every working day, like nearly every man who worked in an office. It was the uniform, like the Navy with a choice of colors. Styles didn’t change much, and I generally could keep wearing a suit or sports coat until it began to look disreputable.
I don’t know many men who truly enjoyed wearing a suit and necktie to work. I sure didn’t. We wore them because we had to, and because looking businesslike could help us climb the ladder to the executive suite (where we would wear more expensive suits). In many companies it was a status thing: On the factory floor at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works the supervisors wore neckties as a badge of rank.
But comfort was more important than status for most folks, and everyone was happy when offices began to change to business casual attire in the 1990s. It was a revolutionary move. At Ameritech, the chairman started things by arriving at the office in slacks and a knit shirt. He spent the day explaining that, no, he wasn’t going golfing, this is the new dress code.
Business casual took different forms at different companies. Some managers I saw at Amoco Oil wore the same suits but hung up the jackets and lost the neckties. At Ameritech, a few leisure suits from the 70s were briefly resurrected and quickly discarded.
It was more complicated for the women. Human resources employees were pressed into service as fashion consultants when people would call and ask: “This is what I want to wear tomorrow… is that okay?”
Even a casual dress code demands rules. Shortly after launching business casual, many companies felt compelled to issue “we didn’t mean that casual” memos banning torn jeans and crop tops. Sears had an ingenious solution: Since they were in the apparel business, they put department-store mannequins in their headquarters lobby with examples of what to wear and what not to.
A logical extension of business casual was Casual Friday, when jeans and more casual attire were permitted. One office at Unilever monetized the universal desire for denim: During office charity drives, employees could purchase a pass to wear jeans on Thursday as well as Friday by donating a few extra bucks to charity.
I paid attention to dress codes because as a consultant, I needed to blend in with multiple clients. At one point I was working with a coat-and-tie hospital association and a business-casual food company. I would attend a meeting at the hospital association, then toss my jacket in the car and take off the tie as I drove to the food company. When I had to reverse the process, one of the guys at the food company noticed me putting on my tie in the men’s room. I explained what I was doing and he said: “Oh, like Superman.”
These days my retiree attire is influenced by New Mexico’s balmy weather and casual culture. Jeans are appropriate practically everywhere. I wear shorts and sandals all summer, and some folks wear them year round. But I still need a suit (and a mothproof bag to store it in). I don’t expect to attend any weddings, but there will be more funerals.