It’s all made-to-measure suits and shirts and ties and bench-made shoes that I just can’t see myself wearing outside the occasional wedding as the winds of style have changed. “But what it shows me is that I can’t wear the vast majority of it any more. “I now have the best wardrobe I’ve ever had – a proper walk-in wardrobe, where I can see all my clothes,” he says. He has recently taken a job as creative director at Nike, moved from New York to Portland, and adjusted his attire accordingly. Dan Rookwood, formerly US editor of the menswear site Mr Porter, was once rarely seen without at least eight items of exquisite tailoring. And it doesn’t necessarily feel like a liberation.Ĭlearly, I am not the only person readjusting to the new workwear rules. If you want to know the truth of it, I’m writing this in slightly mildewy jogging bottoms and luminous orange Adidas running shoes.
The grown-up accoutrements I collected in London – the vintage mother-of-pearl cuff links, the Brooks Brothers shirts, the Paul Smith socks – I sort of left behind. Not having been called to testify before Congress recently (what have I been doing with my life?), I haven’t worn a suit for a while either. But I have never even attempted to wear a tie there. I am freelance and I do a lot of my writing in a co-working space in Bristol where I moved a couple of years ago, amid nut-butter influencers and CBD start-ups and 20-something digital marketing types who say things like: “Yeah, a third of my capital is in crypto.” It’s kind of fun. I am now in my mid-30s and I don’t work in a London newspaper office any more. This mess is what the people voted for, he seems to be saying. However, it’s his special adviser, Dominic Cummings, whose dress is emblematic of the age, somehow – a contemptuous mish-mash of athleisure, dadwear and public school signifiers: the grey Levi’s hoodie with workshirt poking out the hurriedly grabbed tote bag the quilted gilet. When he is in control, he wears the Silicon Valley uniform of T-shirts and jeans – and don’t think that isn’t its own form of power-dressing, a way of saying: “I’m not going to play by your rules.” Boris Johnson’s calculatedly dishevelled appearance is another way of communicating that, too. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wears a suit when he testifies before Congress. The suit in turn has become “a uniform for the power- less”, according to the American site Vox – only worn by people impelled to do so. Power dressing: Dominic Cummings sports a laidback look in Downing Street. Other financial firms have since followed suit as the banks seek to emulate the “whatever” dress codes of the tech companies. A company-wide memo cited the “changing nature of workplaces generally in favour of a more casual environment”. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs – whose bankers were once renowned for their Armani suits and Gucci loafers – announced a move to a “flexible dress code”. Marks & Spencer is cutting back on its formalwear Moss Bros, the suit specialist, has issued three recent profit warnings. Formalwear, in general, is increasingly the preserve of dandies and defendants.Īccording to market analysts Kantar, sales of suits are down 7% year-on-year, ties are down 6% and blazers down 10%. To wear a tie in 2019 is only marginally less eccentric than turning up to work dressed in chainmail. The kind of man whose workwear vision would ultimately prevail.įor the American Neckwear Toilet Evangelist clearly had a better grasp of the future than I did.
The kind of man who refused to see the tie as anything other than a corporate noose around my neck. The kind of man who never wore a tie, clearly. But hang on – why am I justifying myself to a random toilet person? Who starts a conversation in a urinal? I had a fancy peacock silk one that my then-girlfriend-now-wife had bought me from Liberty, but also a weirdly chic green blobby-stripy one we found in an old flea market in Florence for about €2. So easy – one size fits all – and potentially bargainous. Special case, he was testifying before a Senate committee, 10 April 2018. Seldom seen: Mark Zuckerberg, for once without his usual Silicon Valley T-shirt.
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