| Backbone TV |
NEW Geoweb video
|
|
|
| What are you wearing? |
May 6, 2002 |
By Judy Waytiuk
In downtown Toronto, chris carder heads to a meeting with a potential client. the CEO of Thindata, an Internet strategy and Web site consultancy, is neatly turnedout in a smoothly sophisticated, understated black suit, beige shirt, matching tie and black Rockport dress shoes. Seriously traditional business attire for a man whose young company has worked with the likes of TD Waterhouse, Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Xerox Canada.
Simultaneously, 2,000 kilometres west in Winnipeg, Tim Siemens is wearing black khaki pants, a black long-sleeved shirt with a corporate logo (“above my heart, in tasteful greyblack”) and black Rockport loafers. Give him a sword, he jokes, and he’d be Zorro. As it stands, he’s the chief technology officer at consultancy firm Online Business Systems, which made Arthur Andersen’s recent list of Canada’s 50 best-managed private companies.
So, which one, Carder or Siemens, has finessed the new millennium techno-office dress code?
The answer is both, but it’s more complicated than that.
Carder keeps a range of clothing options at his office and changes as he goes from casual meetings with colleagues to formal lunches with high-end business associates, and on to less formal but not casual client get-togethers.
Siemens takes his wardrobe day by day. “I’ve got my week planned out,” he said. “I know how I should be dressing, and if that dress has to change through the day, I usually have it planned out the previous day.”
Prêt à porter
Carder and Siemens are moving with the times in an industry still dealing with the fashion fallout from the business-casual movement.
Office casual is often considered dot-com inspired, but the less formal trend predates dot-coms by a decade.
Business suits began unravelling in the late ’80s when charitable agencies sponsored Casual Fridays: workers gave a donation for the privilege of dressing down once a week. Casual Fridays went over so well that most companies—even IBM, the home of the standard Organization Man—gave employees the right to all-week-long comfort, which became corporate casual.
“We went to a casual dress policy at IBM Canada in 1993,” said Jennifer Murr, IBM spokeswoman at the company’s Canadian headquarters in Markham, Ont. “But essentially what that means—and it has not changed at all since then—is that we dress for our customers. So it varies: if you’re meeting with someone in the financial district, perhaps it’d be more appropriate to be wearing a suit. If you’re calling on a different company, it may be appropriate to wear khakis and a dress shirt.”
M u c h t o o f a r
But in many offices, casual turned sloppy as the dot-com wave rose. Harry Rosen, CEO of menswear retailer Harry Rosen and Canada’s de facto guardian of male clothing correctness, watched in horror as business fashion sense collapsed. “The pendulum swung pretty extremely. Offices that had previously been conservative got pretty casual. I remember visiting my lawyers and seeing guys dressed like they were mowing the lawn,” he said sorrowfully. “The world went a bit crazy. It just got out of hand.”
To Rosen’s relief, the swing back has begun. “My business during the business casual trend was on fire, because people were looking for nicer sportswear,” he said, noting that sales of suits, shirts and ties have regained their number-one standing.
Even casual style has gone highend, he said. “The professionals and senior executives are dressing in more elegant business casual.”
Although he insists “you’re never going to be wrong wearing a suit,” Rosen predicts offices will never return to cookie-cutter business suits.
“Things don’t go back to the way they were,” he said. “Today’s man is way more eclectic. He can wear a suit and look very dressed up, he can dress business casual, he can wear a pair of jeans on the weekend. The old image of the ’50s sitcom where the dad comes home wearing a suit and hat is gone.”
Barbara Atkin, Holt Renfrew’s Torontobased fashion director, agrees. Many compa-nies are embracing more traditional dress codes, Atkin suspects, because “it’s a familiar place, and we’re kind of dangling in that middle where we’re seeing change. When you’re in the middle of change, you have certain companies that hold back, can’t deal with it and go back to what they know.”
She said, though, that this formal pendulum swing will wobble and re-adjust yet again. The dot-com craze “has become a brief Web moment in our history,” she said, but it will have lasting effects. “The whole idea of casual dress, if done properly, is going to be very prevalent, although not right now.”
Wa n t e d : b i g g e r c l o s e t s
Businessmen like Siemens keep larger wardrobes these days.
When he joined Online Business Systems 10 years ago, Siemens wore suits. Now he needs formal business attire, regular businesswear, business casual and ordinary duds for weekends.
About two blocks from where Siemens sits, Inga Shane, vicepresident of corporate finance for accountancy firm Ernst & Young in downtown Winnipeg, does not share his problem.Women have always done business casual dressier, she said. “We have more of an understanding of how to put things together.Women grew up in a world of options where dress separates are very much a part of how a woman dresses. Men had the jacket and tie—that’s what they knew. So all of a sudden, when they had this openness, they didn’t know where to go.”
Like most businesswomen, Shane’s corporate casual look is pants and flat shoes instead of skirts with high heels. “I will wear maybe a blouse and dress slacks, but that’s as casual as I get,” she said, resplendent in beige and black houndstooth check pantsuit with black shell and loafers, amber necklace and earrings.
Luckily, Chris Carder feels he has his wardrobe pretty much aced these days, although gaffes still happen—like the Albany Club incident. Carder recently attended a casual meeting with the board of a non-profit organization in the morning, then, sporting blithe casualwear, went on to Toronto’s la-de-da Albany Club for lunch with a new business associate.
The Albany Club took one look at his outfit and made him wait in the lobby. Passersby glared disapprovingly.
When the impeccably suit-clad lunch companion showed up, the two had to go downstairs to eat, not up to the club.The business relationship turned out fine in the end, but Carder still cringes at the memory.
“I tell that story because it reminds me not to make that mistake ever again. And also it’s made me aware, when someone invites me to a restaurant for lunch or to an event, to do the check in advance that I might not have done in the past. I call to see what the dress code is.”
W e b f a s h i o n
Harry Rosen http://www.harryrosen.com
Holt Renfrew http://www.holtrenfrew.com
|
|
|
| Green Innovation |
|
|
| Top 300 Issue |
 
|
| Gadget of the Week (Canadian) |
|
Pick the best 3G for you
RIM Blackberry Bold
Choosing the right smartphone is an important decision, and here’s the good news: while both the new iPhone and the Bold are excellent, the feel is entirely different, making it easy to choose.
more>>
|
| Gadget of the Week (Japanese) |
Sounds of Japan
Why record just the visual when you can capture the sounds as well.
more>> |
| Backblog RSS feed |
Click to subscribe  |
|
sponsored by 
