Casual Friday A Consumerist Con
Sep. 30th, 2005 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksWho invented dress-down Fridays? And why? My theory is that the clothing industry was desperately looking for ways in which men could be forced to spend more on clothes. After all, "casual Friday" isn't what it pretends to be. I suspect that if half the men in offices turned up on Friday the way that they dressed on Saturday, well, they'd be towed away to the funny farm. Sitting down at the desk in dressing gown and flip-flops is not yet permissible, even in these latter fashion-days of "anything goes".
The "casual" (we have no letter or dipthong to express the soft "j" as in "Anjou" or "caj" -- why is that?) look is, of course, a uniform all of its own, and one that I studiously decline to join. Designer jeans or chinos, expensive slip-ons rather than expensive lace-ups, and labelled polo shirts rather than cufflinked shirts from Horton & Bent of Old Broad Street. Nonsense, the lot of it.
Uniforms, ah, uniforms. I think that one can always guess the lack of intelligence in young people by the extent to which they attempt to pretend that they are "individual" and then all end up dressing like their friends. Anyone "truly" rebellious gets short shrift from the conforming "rebels". Rebellion against authority has its own rules. If you want to find the right person to employ, pick the rebel who goes outside conforming rebellion. The trouble is, that person will probably be expelled from school because the teachers are also too stupid to understand.
Jeans that hang down to your butt cheeks? Revolutionary? I mean, Hello? Boring, dude, boring and conventional.
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The "casual" (we have no letter or dipthong to express the soft "j" as in "Anjou" or "caj" -- why is that?) look is, of course, a uniform all of its own, and one that I studiously decline to join. Designer jeans or chinos, expensive slip-ons rather than expensive lace-ups, and labelled polo shirts rather than cufflinked shirts from Horton & Bent of Old Broad Street. Nonsense, the lot of it.
Uniforms, ah, uniforms. I think that one can always guess the lack of intelligence in young people by the extent to which they attempt to pretend that they are "individual" and then all end up dressing like their friends. Anyone "truly" rebellious gets short shrift from the conforming "rebels". Rebellion against authority has its own rules. If you want to find the right person to employ, pick the rebel who goes outside conforming rebellion. The trouble is, that person will probably be expelled from school because the teachers are also too stupid to understand.
Jeans that hang down to your butt cheeks? Revolutionary? I mean, Hello? Boring, dude, boring and conventional.
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Date: 2005-09-30 09:12 am (UTC)Unless the temperature is below 18C then you'll find me in shorts and any old polo shirt. Come late September I go over to just any old jeans and a sweatshirt. I see 'dressing up' as two-fold. You're either doing it to add to the sense of occasion or you're doing it to create an impression with someone. I can't see why a day to day working environment needs smart clothing on either grounds. Sometimes to see new clients I will dress in a way that might be construed as cool, with a view to impressing them and getting more business. But for established clients, they just get whatever I've turned up in.
I think workplace clothing should be aimed at comfort first and foremost, followed by practicality and for fun (for those that like that sort of thing). I'm not militant about it and whilst Angie was still here we maintained some kind of dress code. Her theory was that dressing in work clothing enabled you to operate in a work mode. I thought this was bollocks but couldn't be bothered to argue.
Now we have a couple of people who dress workishly (dull suit and tie, smart trousers and top), one who bikes in every day (tracksuit) and a few who wear what takes their fancy. Stick to what you're comfortable with for me.
But some of the rebellious dressers out there would be crap employees since some of this is rebellion for its own sake. That isn't what you want out of the staff. You don't want people who are governed by rules but you don't want those who are governed by their own rebelliousness.
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Date: 2005-09-30 04:35 pm (UTC)These days it's mostly not just Fridays, of course: I have worn a suit precisely once in four years, and that was at a funeral.