What not to wear - this century...

[susandennis]

This morning, there was an article in the paper about the return of the slip - the kind you wear under dresses - or you used to never not wear under any clothes that weren't pants.

It seems like just yesterday that the rules for dressing were the same ones that our mothers (and fathers) and even grandparents have used for years.

Women wore skirts and dresses and stockings and slips and bras.  Men wore suits and ties and wingtips.

My freshman year in college, women were not allowed to wear pants except on the weekends.  Seriously.  And this was not at all unusual for east coast colleges and universities.  But, that was really the beginning of the end.  The real end would come some 40 years later and by that time the cycle seems to be just ready to cycle again.

I worked for IBM for 15 years.  The dress code was carved in stone and unbreakable.  No pants for women.  (I remember a summer intern secretary one day asking the branch manager if a 'tasteful pant suit' would be acceptable.  With a facial expression like he had just tasted dog shit, he declared that 'tasteful pant suit' was an oxymoron.)

And men wore white shirts and navy or gray suits and neckties (tasteful).  Once in a while you'd get a rebel with a brown suit and some guy might wear a black one if all his others were in the cleaners but otherwise, there was no deviation.  I remember in the early 90's when the stone the code was carved in was beginning to crumble, some of the marketing executives started getting kinky with monograms - on the cuff and often white.

Always white shirts.  The executives wore expensive ones.  The CE's (service guys) wore cheap ones.  They had it tough - especially the copier repair guys.  They went through shirts like candy AND were always getting mistaken for Mormon missionaries.

In 1989, I moved to California and things started to unravel.  Dress Down Fridays was the beginning of the end.  And the only reason it even got a toe hold was that by then more of the asses in executive chairs were of the female persuasion.   The men wanted no part of it.  The men at the top of the food chain and the men at the bottom.  They were dragged kicking and screaming into khakis and golf shirts.

My friend, Jim bitched about it until the day he finally left IBM about 10 years later.  He said cost him a good 30 minutes every morning just having to decide and find something to wear.  His work clothes were easy - they rotated every day and divided their time between his closet and the dry cleaners.  Dress down clothes had a whole different set of rules.

I've spent the past 10 years in my neighborhood with a few years working out on the Microsoft campus.  The dress code in both places has been kind of "please cover yourself, please but if not... well, please do."   And then Starbucks moved a lot of their corporate offices into the building across the street.  Now we have 8 floors of folks climbing up the ladder of a large corporation.  A lot of those people are women and the 'hood is full of women dressed for business.  I don't know if they are wearing slips or not but it is still strange to me to see these women dressing up.  I'm glad I don't have to participate.

I don't know if dress is dictated by management - I'm guessing it's more peer pressure.  I wonder how these young workers feel about it or if they even think about it. 

Comments

[canuckgirl.livejournal.com]

The return of the slip? Ewwwwwwww....

The only times I've worn a dress at work lately has been to beat the summer heat, and obviously, there was no pantyhose involved!

I've never gotten into the whole pointy shoe phase. To me, it's not an attractive look, and my feet hurt just thinking about it! :)

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Slips are worthless. I understand the point, but I hate them. So I wear what I call power panties. Essentially they are bike shorts with extra spandex to keep my fat thighs from exploding. And to keep the chub rub down to a minimum. Plus when I fall in the parking lot and my skirt flies up over my head I have some power panty shorts on and it's all good.

[susandennis]

I like that... power panties!

[letmesaythis.livejournal.com]

I actually worry that business attire will return to the workplace before I retire. If I find myself needing a suit beyond an interview, I'm changing careers...or something. Anything but the suit and, godforbid, the hose.

[susandennis]

yes, lord. I am 99% sure that I will never again find myself in a position to have to routinely wear pantyhose. And for that I am profoundly grateful. My goal is to work towards NEVER having to put them on again. Ever.

[joyce.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time, I worked in social services (at one agency, the stated dress code from the business manager was "cover your tits"), and then when I moved back here, I went to work for some lawyers and had to dress better than that, and hated every fracking minute of it. :) So I'm sure some of them hate it and some of them love it, but I sure wouldn't want to have to. (And, thanks to my plans to be an academic for the rest of my life, I don't have to. I win.)

[susandennis]

Yep... you made a very wise career choice...

[geordie.livejournal.com]

I detested having to wear a tie to work. One of the up sides of being a contractor was being outside the dress code, contractors could wear what they liked.

[fiending.livejournal.com]

Hi there. :)

I don't mean to be a bother, but I'm an LJ friend of Ossie, and I recently posted an entry in my journal about moving to Seattle. I asked my friends list if anybody knew the "good" vs "seedy" parts of Seattle so that I can look at apartment websites/craigslist accordingly ... I don't want to end up in a bad area (some of the prices seem too good to be true!) ... I will be staying with a friend when I first move out there, but he is new to Seattle - originally from Yakima - so he isn't too familiar with all of the surrounding areas yet either. Anyhow, Ossie said that I should perhaps ask you if you have any pointers to areas that I should look into (in or near downtown). Thank you for your time.

~Elle.

[susandennis]

I'm happy to help but I have no clue what you consider "good" or "seedy". My own neighborhood - on the edge of downtown - would be considered dangerous and undesirable and in a "bad area" by many and but I think it's interesting and fun and convenient and I wouldn't live anywhere else. If you have a particular area you'd like to ask about, I'll be happy to give you my impression of it but that might not help you.

[fiending.livejournal.com]

Well, I have lived in Orlando and Houston - both in fairly bad areas, as well as spending a lot of time in Los Angeles and New York City. As silly as it may sound, drive-by's are really my only major worry.

I think my best bet may be Wallingford or somewhere near there because I plan on attending the University of Washington. I don't think Wallingford is far from downtown, is it?

Unfortunately, I can't find any fairly decent maps with city (or sub-sectioned?) names on it.

Thank you for your help. :)

[susandennis]

Here's a map that shows Wallingford's relationship to downtown. The googles maps of Seattle have most of the neighborhoods labeled pretty well.



I wouldn't call it close to downtown (downtown is where you see '2nd Ave') but everything is relative :)

[seattlejo.livejournal.com]

Susan, I hope you don't mind if I poke my nose in here.

Wallingford is wonderful to live in. Its got a cute little shops area, a good grocery store, a tea shop, a cupcake shop an alternative pharmacy, great indian food. etc. Its close to the University district and it only takes 1 bus to get downtown.

In regards to bad areas, with LA experience I would say that you'll be fine with anything Seattle has to offer, and you'll find that things are much closer then you are used to.

If you truly want to avoid "bad" areas I'd avoid most anything south of downtown, Columbia City, Ranier Beach, Beacon hill. the central district.

If you can afford something downtown, go for it. If you can't then Wallingford, Queen Anne, Capitol Hill are all good. You have to be careful in the University district so that you don't end up on greek row.

[susandennis]

I don't mind but I don't agree. I love Beacon Hill and if I had to move from here (south of downtown), I would probably go there.

Abd Wallingford, Freemont and Queen Anne would be at the far bottom of my list.

Different strokes so probably good you chimed in.

[seattlejo.livejournal.com]

Different strokes indeed :-)

To be honest, if where i lived was only up to me, I'd aim for Columbia City as it's more ethnic and affordable. My family think that is too far and too dangerous.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Years ago (1997-1999) I worked in a very uptight bank and we all wore suits. I didn't think that men were capable of being critical about clothing, until I learned at that job they judged all of their male coworkers on the quality of their shirt, whether they wore a t-shirt underneath, etc. I knew one guy who lived in fear of not getting things right and wore the white t-shirt under all shirts, including his "dress down Friday" polo shirts.

I work in a national lab right now and my attire swings between "meet the funders" type of outfits to t-shirts with holes. Whenever I am dressed up, I am either wearing a slip deliberately or the skirt has a slip in it. The problem stems from nylons and tights. If you are not careful, you can electrify your whole skirt without a slip. Best to just wear one and not worry about your skirt permanently stuck to your legs through static cling.

[susandennis]

Interesting that the slip still serves the same function it used to!

And you are right about the guys. You'd think a white shirt was a white shirt but ohhhhhh nosurreee!

[fj.livejournal.com]

Look, we have to measure ranking somehow, even when we're supposed to have the main item tucked away in our suit pants. Any proxy item will do.

Never been in a suit environment. I wear them to interviews and weddings and funerals, and that is it. Any environment that would want me to wear a suit had better have a damn interesting pay package.

[howeird]

The insane dress code is what made me decline being a field service engineer for IBM, despite several invitations and offers of high pay. I also walked out of a offer interview with some Georgia-based company when they said beards were against their dress code.

Microsoft does have a dress code - it's something like "dress appropriately for the job". If the job involves direct customer contact, your manager may require things like suits or your team's logo T-shirt. I have never heard of it extending to underwear. Most of my team wore whatever was clean that week.

[ms-hackman.livejournal.com]

When I started working at the newspaper there was no dress code. Then we moved buildings, to a newly renovated space downtown, and the publisher dictated that we now had a dress code - which was No blue jeans, no sandals, and no spaghetti straps. (it was actually worse than that and extended to our workspaces - we *had* to hang our coats up and keep desks cleared in case a TOUR went through - they were always showing our new work space off to people)

The union (journalists mainly) fought it and won. They argued that it was ridiculous to discriminate against pants just because of their colour (we could wear any other colour of jeans). Their real beef was that they dressed appropriately for the job - if they were interviewing the mayor, or some business exec, they dressed up. If they were interviewing homeless people, they didn't necessarily want to intimidate them by dressing up.

I figured I was in the only web department on the planet where you couldn't wear jeans. Bah.

But what I've heard, and what I've noticed, is that women in the office in particular dress up anyway, and they don't do it for themselves or men, but for /other/ women. It is almost like a competition for them. Or a way of fitting in. Or I don't know what.

Me, I wear blue jeans every day. Nice ones, but blue jeans.

And I never wore a slip - not even as a kid when my mother said I had to. And I never, ever will.

[seattlejo.livejournal.com]

Coming to Seattle after living in Chicago I was a bit baffled by the dress code. I had the full skirt suit that I interviewed in and when I asked the ISP about dress code I was told "You can wear that if you wish"

I was crestfallen. I thought that I'd finally gotten out of business dress where casual Friday was casual as long as it didnt involve jeans or anything too comfortable. I quickly learned that at the ISP anything went, as long as you were hopefully covered. (though during an infamous party or two.....)

It took a while to adjust to the casualness .
When I left my favorite outfit involved a shwaggy t-shirt and jeans with a big hole in the knee.

Now I find myself upgrading my wardrobe, not as far as pantyhose or or slips, but just trying to look a little more professional.

[legalmoose]

You know, I'm glad I'm good at what I do, because it means I can get away with not wearing a tie here at work. I wear khakis, a dress shirt with a white undershirt, but I refuse to wear a tie unless I absolutely have to (i.e., a meeting with the public [rare] or with someone with "Assistant Secretary" or higher in their title). Even my current general counsel doesn't get me in a tie unless there's someone else I don't know who's at his rank in the meeting (if the assistant secretary or higher is on a first name basis with me, he or she doesn't get a tie, either). I hate them. Always have, always will.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I worked at Control Data during a brief period when it was hiring during its long decline into obscurity. When I started it seemed like a dress-up place, but gradually I started to notice that (unwritten, unspoken) dress code was age-based. I was in my 20s, so I had no age peers, but I slacked off and dressed like the 40-somethings, and no one objected.

One of my duties was keeping a Sun server (3/160, with a 68020 processor, to hint at the era) working smoothly. At some point it decided it didn't want to behave, so I got to know the Sun repair guy really well. (I think he replaced everything on the server except the wheeled case and the boot-tape drive at least once.) He was always dressed at least as formally as I was, although my dress clothes were better quality. The first thing he did upon entering the room where the Sun broke down was to tuck the end of his tie into his shirt, between a couple of buttons. He un-tucked it when he left the room, even briefly.

I assume that the copier repair people had to wear cheap suits and shirts too, like the Sun guy, but I didn't use the copier enough to see the copier repair people.

After Control Data laid off 3100 people one day, including me, I got a new job at a large Redmond company. The only place I ever saw with a dress code was the company cafeteria, which had the same "no shirt, no shoes, no service" code as any other food service place. A few people there never wore shoes, even in cold weather. I failed to notice whether they had shoes for the cafeteria, defied the rules there, or just didn't eat there. Non-faded jeans were dressy there.

Now I work (given a sufficiently loose definition of "work") at home. Our dress code could be described as "don't sweat on the furniture, and don't shock visitors".