{"id":9429,"date":"2021-08-02T11:25:58","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T17:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/?p=9429"},"modified":"2025-01-22T14:02:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T20:02:30","slug":"is-the-formal-suited-and-booted-office-dress-code-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/is-the-formal-suited-and-booted-office-dress-code-extinct\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the formal ‘suited and booted’ office dress code extinct?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bryan Lufkin<\/a> | <\/a>15th July 2021 | BBC<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve been drifting away from formal office dress codes for years. The pandemic may have finished them off for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you didn\u2019t buy any new clothes during the pandemic, you\u2019re far from alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the UK, clothing sales plummeted 25% in 2020<\/a>, the largest annual drop since record-keeping began 23 years ago. The picture was similar in the US, where fashion companies saw a 90% decline in profit<\/a> in 2020. Particularly hard hit was the business-fashion sector<\/a>, as workers swapped offices for their homes, in-person meetings for Zoom \u2013 and downgraded their outfits accordingly.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as vaccine rollouts move many countries closer to returning to the office, many of us may be realising it\u2019s time to sideline our athleisure and slip into something a little more presentable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This realisation might be particularly acute, and indeed unwelcome, for people employed in sectors where formal attire \u2013 like business suits, ties and high-heels \u2013 is more common. Yet we\u2019ve been drifting away from these kinds of office dress codes for years<\/a>, and experts believe that the pandemic will have further reduced the need for this kind of attire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we transition to the post-pandemic era and its new forms of flexible work, companies may well focus more on functionality \u2013 and care even less<\/em> about staff showing up in formal office wear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formality\u2019s rise and fall<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s abundantly clear that the pandemic has accelerated a long-standing discussion around whether business attire is still relevant. Lockdowns were barely a few weeks old before we began prognosticating about the future of slacks and blazers. By May, we were already debating why the office dress code should never come back<\/a>, or whether the suit was finally dead<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, some experts encouraged us to dress up for work video calls anyway<\/a>, as it could bolster our mental health and increase our sense of purpose and productivity. (Most of us dropped that pretty quickly, though). Instead, during the past 18 months, most of us have worn what\u2019s comfortable \u2013 and the overall consensus is that we\u2019ve been pretty productive, regardless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a far cry from the idea that to do your best work \u2013 and cultivate the best impression \u2013 you need to look the part. That kind of thinking dates back to the Victorian era, when professional, educated and wealthy men wore wardrobes of velvet and fur<\/a>, which signaled status and influence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raissa Breta\u00f1a, fashion historian and adjunct professor of art history at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, says that from the 19th Century to the post-war years, tailormade suits were the norm for both working men and men of leisure \u2013 and, eventually, women of the same classes. \u201cIt was only in the later part of the 20th Century \u2013 when dress became more casual and democratic \u2013 that the idea of the \u2018business suit\u2019 became almost exclusively associated with white collar workwear,\u201d says Breta\u00f1a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our obsession with business suits peaked sometime in the 1980s, with\u00a0the rise of the \u2018power suit\u2019<\/a>: the outfit that defined the \u2018greed is good decade\u2019 and communicated wealth and power even in pop culture, whether it was the movie Wall Street or the TV series Dynasty.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here for the rest of the story…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bryan Lufkin | 15th July 2021 | BBC We’ve been drifting away from formal office dress codes for years. The pandemic may have finished them off for good. If you didn\u2019t buy any new clothes during the pandemic, you\u2019re far from alone. In the UK, clothing sales plummeted 25% in 2020, the largest annual drop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1,2],"tags":[506,15,1253,1250,1254,1252],"class_list":["post-9429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-blog","category-insurance","category-shield-blog","tag-business-casual","tag-business","tag-business-suite","tag-dress-code","tag-neckties","tag-office-dress"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9429"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11619,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429\/revisions\/11619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}