He Wore Shorts To Work
The point of this article, I think, is that powerful men in business know that if they dress the same for business as for leisure, something has been lost.
Ministers, who are powerful in different and counter-cultural ways, should take heed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/fashion/06HEAT.html?_r=1&8nyh&emc=nyh&oref=slogin
Ministers, who are powerful in different and counter-cultural ways, should take heed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/fashion/06HEAT.html?_r=1&8nyh&emc=nyh&oref=slogin
posted by PeaceBang at 5:21 PM
4 Comments:
On an unrelated note, dear PeaceBang, I must call your attention to the inimitable Christopher Muther's article in today's Boston Globe, "Cut the Clown Shoes":
"Nurses, sous chefs, professional gardeners, children under the age of 8, and anyone with an employee ID from Barnum & Bailey are fine to wear Crocs. If you fall into one of these categories, please don't write me an angry letter. If you don't fall into one of these categories, I encourage you to unite with other Crocs owners, light a bonfire, and melt those homely things into beer can cozies for the needy."
On another unrelated note, I will confess that I could not find a suitable vacation hat other than a snappy cotton baseball cap on sale at Esprit. (The logo on it is very very small and practically invisible. Does that lessen the sting?) My other hat options were wool fedoras, straw hats, and bear or beaver Russian-style winter hats. Alas, I couldn't find a good replacement for my lost cabby hat. So I violated one of your precepts on my vacation, but there was nothing to be done.
Dear brethren, buy your summer hat in the spring. They don't sell 'em in the summer.
Nearly 20 years ago, the engineering firm that I worked for had planned an after-work picnic/barbecue on the office patio for clients and friends of the firm. We were encouraged to wear "picnic/beach attire" for the event, however the memo reminded us that we were expected to dress professionally for the work-day. There was a large group of us young engineers (of which I was the only woman) who were in our mid-late twenties, and together as a group we conspired to comply with the seemingly contradictory instructions. We all dressed professionally from the waist up, but below, we all wore jams shorts that were popular at the time. For you youngsters out there, these were long shorts - knee-length or longer - in colorful tropical prints. Dressed up above the waist, while we sat our desks in our cubicles, no one was the wiser, yet our spirits were much higher that day because of our little joke.
Trusting the security of numbers, we all met for breakfast and arrived at the office together and entered en masse acting as if there were nothing unusual about the way we were dressed. It was all received in the the good-natured spirit in which it was intended, and was a great bonding experience for us. I occasionally run across the photo from that day, and it never ceases to bring a smile to my face.
Bottom line, though, it was one time, special event, just for fun. None of those guys would have been caught dead in a professional setting in shorts on any other ocassion, especially by themselves. Engineers are a conservative bunch!
Noted during my recent adventures in Finland (about which I'll say more sooner or later):
European men have embraced the man-capri! A salesman at Structure here in Cambridge, Mass., tried to interest me in them back in 1999, but let's just acknowledge here and now that "fashion-forward" and "Philocrites" have rarely appeared in the same sentence and I did not climb on that unoccupied bandwagon back in '99. (Structure seems to have gone away shortly thereafter, I'd add.) But over in northern Europe, man-capris are everywhere.
Finnish men's business wear is traditional and includes no short pants, but they do wear their ties very loosely knotted. I didn't see a double Windsor knot the whole time we were in Helsinki.
P.S. You should see Marimekko's neckties.
You vent to Finland!? WOW! Was it light all day!?
Are Marimekko ties beautiful? And you didn't get any manpris, did you? Because that would be a security issue for getting back into the U.S., or should be, as far as I'm concerned.
P.S. You BIG SILLY, of course you're allowed to wear baseball caps on vacation!!Welcome back!
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