Who can blame those who find the business media boring? Talk about an imminent recession, quantitative easing, and property bubbles can easily make many sensible people go to sleep. However, the more cynical are amused by the trivia that occasionally erupts in sombre business websites and printed newspapers.
Articles about business dress code are particularly amusing to those who refuse to define themselves by what they wear. These brave souls have to wage battle with the conservative dinosaurs that exist in every profession. The heated arguments in these battles are the best antidote for those who believe that one must never judge a book by its cover.
A recent conference on ‘Transforming Women’s Leadership in the Law’ a partner in a City of London law firm advised trainees against wearing brown shoes with a blue suit. A bored participant “leaked” this little bit of wisdom to the website legalcheek.com. Soon a colourful war of words erupted. A conference intended to promote gender equality soon made headlines for the footwear advice so solemnly given to young trainees.
The UK Social Mobility Commission published a paper on socio-economic diversity in investment banking. It suggested that the choice of shoe colour creates some sort of glass ceiling: “opaque codes of conduct also extend to dress. For men, the wearing of brown shoes with a business suit is generally (though not always) considered unacceptable by and for British bankers within the investment banking division. However, bankers in corporate finance may get away with wearing brown shoes perhaps, for example, if they are sufficiently senior”.
A well-dressed person tends to stand out
If this is not amusing enough, remember that in continental Europe bankers wearing different shades of brown shoes are not considered as breaking the dress codes of their profession. One wonders whether British bankers were influenced by this quirky practice when they made up their minds whether they would be pro or anti Brexit.
The legal profession is arguably the most conservative profession not least in the way they dress. Just visit the court on a busy day and watch the young and old lawyers rushing from one hall to another dressed in black suits with white or black ties, black shoes and a toga that is often a family heirloom inherited from two or three past generations.
The medical profession is more practical and attuned to modern living where informality in dress code prevails. I remember distinctly an amusing case that illustrates how appearances matter and determine how people perceive us.
A worker decided to take a day off work by reporting sick. He wanted to stay at home as his TV needed repairs. Yes, it was the time when broken TVs could be repaired rather than just scrapped. When this worker heard the doorbell, he rushed to open the door to his house believing that the TV technician had decided to call early. He found a young man wearing a bright shirt, shorts and sandals while carrying a black bag on his back as he used a motorcycle to travel.
This worker soon started to complain to this young man how he was not seeing anything. The visitor, who in reality was a recently-qualified family doctor, soon brought out a medical instrument to examine the worker’s eyes only to discover that his ‘patient’ was a skiver who just wanted his TV set to be repaired.
We are indeed living in an era where appearances matter. Politicians, church dignitaries, and business people use the insignia of power to attract attention. Social psychologists try to explain this in the context of class consciousness and the irresistible human instinct to get noticed by standing out in a crowd. One human resources website advised business trainees to gain an edge over others to impress their bosses. It advises young people: “A well-dressed person tends to stand out. If you are well dressed for an interview, for instance, you will stand out in the crowd, and immediately attain an edge over the other people potential interviewees”. What young person could ignore such advice honed over decades of business dress code tradition?
It is refreshing to see some local business people shedding decades-old colonial traditions in business dress code by sensibly not wearing ties even on formal occasions. It is perfectly sensible to do so in our hot climate even if one must not stretch this climate argument too far. After all, without tradition, our life would have been as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.