For as long as I can remember, a coat and tie have been the appropriate dress codes for anything of importance. Wedding, funeral, job interview --- all appropriate places for wearing a coat and tie. Your “Sunday best,” as it were. Some occasions demand that we “gussy it up,” as Daddy Warbucks said to Annie. Or as 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy puts it, “No tuxedo after 5:00 PM. What are we, farmers?”
As a kid, I always knew a relative was sick and not doing well when mom took me down to Sears-Roebuck for a new dark suit. Still have nightmares about how they always led me to the Husky department. You could throw together a sports coat and khakis for some things, but other events required the coat and tie, and a suit of some description. There was even the “leisure suit,” but that’s a topic for another day.
In my first jobs out of college, a coat and tie were mandatory every day at the office. I worked for a Chamber of Commerce and a county Board of Commissioners. When I got into cable TV, I was introduced to the concept of “business casual.” Keep the dress shirt, but lose the tie, and put on a sweater vest. It was a comfortable look that took me back to the preppy days of high school and college. Generally the thinking was if you are not “customer-facing” that day, then go business casual. It said we meant business, but in a laid back sort of way.
About the time I was getting comfortable with all of this, along came people like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, who has taken business casual to a whole new level. More like business comatose, in the eyes of my peers.
Business comatose says lose the coat and tie, and lose the dress shirt. Heck, lose the sweater vest and the dress pants. Replace them all with jeans, your T-shirt Du Jour and an amazingly versatile item known as a “hoodie.” Don’t zip it up too high, that’s part of the look. You have to show off that logo on your t-shirt, which is making a statement about the environment, politics or the Rolling Stones. And if you don’t shave that day, no problem. Unshaven actually compliments the overall look of business comatose.
The message is clear: The man who has everything wears anything. And I like the Rolling Stones.
A friend of mine recently sent me a photo of Avner Ronen, CEO for a company called BOXEE. It’s a product that brings TV and movies to your flat screen through a wireless or Ethernet connection. Ronen was standing behind a podium at the Westin New York at Times Square, speaking to a large group of people wearing a t-shirt and hoodie. He looked perfectly comfortable, if not downright comatose.
I imagined myself, closing in on 48-years-old next month, standing in a hotel room preparing to go downstairs and speak to a conference. Would I wear my dark suit and power tie or a hoodie and Letterman t-shirt? It appears that the hoodie would be the more appropriate choice, at least according to the cool kids in class.
But before we lock this in as Gospel truth, let me interject this question. Are the hoodie and t-shirt only acceptable below a certain age, say 30? As a senior, more experienced member of the team, should I continue to wear my dress shirt and sweater vest, as a tribute to bygone generations?
Feel free to weigh in on this issue in the space provided below. I would like to hear from you. And if this is the age of the t-shirt and hoodie, could the “wife beater” and sweats be far behind? Now those are really comfortable. I may need Clinton Kelly and Stacey London on this one.In the meantime, work hard, be yourself and embrace the power of the Hoodie. It’s a new age where dressing for the job you want might lead us all down to the car wash.
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