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I am attending an academic conference next month. While scrolling through the list of presenters I see they have listed a business casual dress code.
The phrase business
casual has always been amusing to me in its vagueness and interpretive nature. It
may in fact be much more restrictive than I am imagining but I think there is
power and playfulness in its abstraction.
Business Casual insinuates
that in the business world where business adults are doing serious business
things that the default mood is formal. This space is formal. One can only
assume then that the business world is where the kings and queens of our modern day society reside. If that is the case, perhaps I am the joker in a pack of cards or the
fool from a tarot deck.
When one Googles, “what
is business casual?” it is murky but if you look at enough pictures, you will
see a pattern begin to form. No jeans, no t-shirts, muted tones, blouses, blazers,
button ups, bbbbb. If you continue to dig you will find Reddit threads and
authors exploring Corporate Gen Z clothes, is business casual dead, power
causal vs corporate casual vs workwear. The rules seem so interpretive at times,
that Business Casual appears to be more
of a vibe than an actual set of rules. It's morphing and changing and obscure. There is room to hold power and challenge power and be flirty and sexy and artsy and pretend business person who is doing important business person things. I'm on the way to the stock market. I'm going to yell out the numbers that were listed on the back of my fortune cookie. Buy now, buy now! I won't know what I'm talking about but my clothes say otherwise.
I would be lying
if I said I didn't enjoy learning the constraints of antiquated authoritarian workplace
formalities purely to push the boundaries of those constraints. Perhaps I am
just a brat.
I think of the new
button up I bought. It is covered in colorful dinosaurs and gives off major Ms.
Frizzle energy. I wore it for the first time this weekend with a mustard yellow
skirt, and black blazer. All the facets of feminine business casual are present.
A skirt, a collar, a button up, a blazer. I straddle the line of technicality.
Marrying playfulness and business feels like reclaiming some form of power. Power from
who exactly, I am not sure. Power from the hierarchy of clothing. Can one reclaim power from an imagined system with rules not written but nevertheless felt? Is this not all a game of expanding imagination?
I guess what I am
trying to say is wear the dinosaur shirt.
Yes obviously DO go with the dinosaur shirt!
ReplyDeleteI have many thoughts and am curious about what Emily (who spent her thirties, I'd say, toeing the line of office wear) will say.
1. I like the idea of following the technical rules but not the spirit of the law.
2. I'm meta-shocked about the rules themselves, as I thought this was--is it the Seattle one for work?--an academics' conference and though I know it's not a presentation of intellectual inquiry, per se, since it's academic in its labor/output concerns, I'm dismayed by this move to, as you suggest, create "royalty" in formal wear who "run" the university sans students and faculty. Ruling class bullshit. College of Business bullshit. The effect of hyper-professionalizing (in affect not necessarily in praxis) these spaces is to de-professionalize the faculty side of things. SO interesting how this intersects with clothing!!!
3. On top of the other book ideas--Barthes is sitting on my desk at work via inter-library loan--we should all read _Locally Made Panties_. I only know of it and have seen excerpts but I think it will be *exactly* what we all want to think about: https://pankmagazine.com/2015/02/04/lightning-room-arielle-greenberg/#more-25258
4. I think some of this question you pose here might fit into something Emily emailed me about before the blog officially began: anti-non-conformity dressing & what that might mean for people (I'm assuming us three) who have always leaned on a nonconformist attitude.
I have more thoughts but no time.
Soon!
Maybe “business casual” is a “rebellion of the natural self.” In my office days, my business casual often took the form of overdressing--a rebellion in buttoned-up extravagance, perhaps likened to an art gallery owner or someone who looks like they have a date later. I think this was just a carryover from my teen years as a goth, a romance of angles and insecurity. If I had to dress in business casual attire today, I don’t know what I’d do. Maybe ask if I can borrow your dinosaur shirt? It sounds cool.
ReplyDeleteAs a veteran of the business world for over 20 years, I have always hated business attire, and especially "business casual." I've always said (and I absolutely believe this to be true) that men created business casual so that they could wear their golf clothes to work. I refuse the convention myself so I am perpetually dressed either too causal or too formal, and for some reason, someone will always call me out. But still, you'll never catch me in khakis and a tucked in polo shirt. Emily bought me a dinosaur tie a few years ago, but haven't yet had a chance to try it out at work. I am re-inspired.
ReplyDeleteI support your refusal. These people calling you out sound like tools but its worth enduring a million times over if it means not wearing khakis and a tucked polo. How this is where we have landed in late stage capitalism, the height of consumption, is beyond me. I'd prefer to see everyone dressed as their favorite mascot, or newsies, maybe zoot suits, even a futuristic take wrapped in tinfoil and duct tape. I hope you wear the dinosaur tie. It sounds rad!
ReplyDelete