Appearance Still Matters Despite Casual Dress Codes
By WENDY BOUNDS and JOANN S. LUBLIN
originally posted at WSJ.com
CareerJournal
In corporate offices across America, casual dress codes can spell costly chaos.
David Magy found out the hard way. Six months after launching a Minneapolis executive-recruiting firm, he got a nibble from a big computer maker.
They agreed to meet for breakfast on a Friday, and the prospective client assured him he could "dress down." Mr. Magy and his partner showed up in neat sweaters and Dockers trousers. Their prospect, however, wore a sport coat and tie, and talk of the sartorial clash consumed the first 15 minutes of the meeting.
Abeln, Magy & Associates didn't get the account. "We were judged badly because of our appearance," Mr. Magy says ruefully.
Fraught With Peril
When ironclad office dress codes loosened up in the early 1990s, employees looked to the boss for cues in achieving a casual -- but not slovenly -- look. But today, the question of what to wear in business meetings and interviews outside the office is particularly fraught with traps and land mines.
Casual dress codes vary widely, and the penalty for missteps gives new meaning to the term "fashion victim." Mike Blumenfeld, a New York business consultant, says he once wore a coat, tie and vest to a meeting with a retailing-industry client who sells a lot of jeans. The client wore jeans to the meeting. Right away, the client began pestering Mr. Blumenfeld to remove his tie.
How about if I take off my jacket and loosen my vest, Mr. Blumenfeld countered. Not satisfied, the client finally grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped off the tie. He handed Mr. Blumenfeld a $20 bill, saying: "Don't ever wear a tie in my office again."
Today, when Mr. Blumenfeld calls on clients, he says, "I follow their rules." NovaCare Inc. in King of Prussia, Pa., sees legions of job applicants as a provider of physical-rehabilitation, occupational-health and human-resource services to employers. It says about 30% of its clerical-job applicants now come to interviews in jogging outfits, cropped tops and other excessively casual garb. That is up from about 10% in 1995.
The company, which allows casual dress only on Fridays, once rejected a candidate for the job of top legal officer partly because she showed up for the interview in a casual pantsuit and backpack. Even with better credentials, she wouldn't have passed muster because "she didn't look professional," says Gerry Johnson Geckle, a NovaCare vice president. The job went to a male executive who wore a dark suit and white dress shirt to his interview.
Penalized for Dressing Up
It can be just as fatal to flout casual codes. Elementary school teacher Susie Swafford believes she was turned down for several jobs in suburban Colorado schools because she overdressed for interviews in mid-1996. Ms. Swafford says she usually showed up in a linen suit and pumps, her hair and makeup flawless.
Big mistake. She met with one principal who wore faded shorts and propped her bare feet on a chair. Another school official interviewed her in jeans. A third bluntly told Ms. Swafford that she looked like a "model" or "cheerleader," and that her fancy appearance intimidated other teachers.
"I just started bawling," Ms. Swafford recalls. "I said, 'I can't believe because of the way I look [that] I'm not going to get the job.' " She finally got a teaching post elsewhere, and later became a saleswoman for a unit of Kent Electronics Corp., a networking-equipment vendor. Kent co-workers urged her to don shorts or jeans for her first casual Friday, but she went with black slacks and a beige blazer.
The fashion world is no help, slinging around terms like "corporate casual," "business casual," "smart casual" and just plain "casual" to describe dressing down. Dale Winston, president of New York recruiter Battalia Winston International, says there is ample room for error, what with the riot of different interpretations of casual attire she sees during visits to corporate clients.
Making matters worse, dressing down has evolved from a precious Friday perk to an everyday event at many companies. More than 40 million people, or 53% of U.S. office workers, say they can dress casually all week, according to a 1997 poll of nearly 900 white-collar employees by casual-apparelmaker Levi Strauss & Co., which admittedly has a strong interest in the subject. Two years earlier, it was 33%.
'Just in Case'
Attorney Steve Pokotilow, of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in New York, hedges his bets. Though his firm permits casual Friday dress, Mr. Pokotilow stores an old Hickey-Freeman pinstriped suit in his office -- "just in case." A colleague, Laura Goldbard, stockpiles at least 10 pairs of shoes for impromptu changes.
Sometimes tactical reconnaissance is in order. Jim Jacoby, an independent sales and management consultant in New York, always inquires whether a company's dress code is "high corporate" or "corporate casual," before heading to meetings with prospective clients. During the recent heat wave, he asked the host firm whether he could wear shorts and Docksiders to a lunch meeting. "They said sure," he says.
At Autodesk Inc., a San Rafael, Calif., software maker where technical and creative types favor shorts, T-shirts and flip-flop sandals, potential suppliers often call in advance for fashion tips. "They'll say, 'I heard your company is casual. I was thinking of wearing slacks and a sweater. Do you think that would be okay?' " says Mariann Layne, director of marketing services.
Likewise, at Tandy Corp., chief information officer Evelyn Follit sends copies of her newly revised casual dress code to outside vendors who inquire. "They dress just like us now," she says. Tandy has a complicated, two-tier casual-dress policy at its technology center in Fort Worth, Texas. Jeans and sneakers are allowed on Fridays. But otherwise, it is dressier "smart casual" attire.
Flextronics International Ltd. in San Jose, Calif., had major fashion -- integration problems after acquiring several smaller companies. The electronics engineering firm permits "business casual" dress, but ran into trouble when some new employees showed up in Army fatigues.
The acquired firms "were very rooted in the counterculture, and we didn't want to tell someone how to dress," says Bobby Penn, a senior marketing executive. So the company threw a fashion show. Its CEO was among those who waltzed down a makeshift runway modeling "appropriate" casual attire like golf shirts, ribbed T-shirts and khakis.
Dorrit J. Bern, chairman of Charming Shoppes Inc., got a pointed lesson
in the perils of dressing down. It came one Friday when a local newspaper
preparing a profile of the Bensalem, Pa., apparel chain sent out a photographer
on short notice. She had to pose in the boardroom clad in leather pants
and a denim shirt. "I'll never do that again," says Ms. Bern.
She now sticks to pantsuits on Fridays, making her the most formally dressed
person in the office.
This article reprinted in full without permission for the purposes of education and research, as permitted by Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.