Conservative attire replaces 'business casual'

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Every revolution has its backlash. And so it is with "business casual" -- a movement that began in the 1980s with "dress-down Fridays" and gained speed in the mid-'90s, as dotcoms launched the reign of Dockers and flip-flops, and sent the white-collar world into vertiginous wardrobe flux.
Traditional dress, it seemed to some, was headed the way of the typewriter.
But "business casual" meant different things to different people. As boundaries dissolved, workers turned up in everything from bow ties to cutoffs.
One Boston boss came to work in a Speedo. And with the economy booming and labor scarce, bosses were loath to send ill-clad workers home.
These days, according to a new survey by iron manufacturer Rowenta, 88 percent of U.S. companies have gone business casual (not surprisingly, Rowenta recommends more ironing).
But with lax dress codes linked by some to everything from a rise in office flirtation to absenteeism to dotcom failures, many managers are steaming over the whole idea of business casual, and a more conservative sensibility is threading through the American workplace.
As companies buckle down on budgets, they're buckling real belts as well. Flip-flops have lost that confident, dealmaking savoir-faire and become, well, flippant.
"It's a displaced anxiety," says Steve Lawler, a St. Louis-based ethics consultant who observes businesses worldwide.
What's different
"Work environments are much more tense these days, so one of the ways people can control that stress is to manage things that are available to them -- saying, 'We've gotten a little lax about clothes here, so pants should be ironed and shirts should be collared.'"
The change has been swift: Nearly one in five corporations with daily formal dress codes have reinstituted those policies over the past year, according to a survey by the Men's Apparel Alliance.
In some cases, the pendulum of formal dress has swung back to pre-1990 levels. Mary Lynn Damhorst, associate professor of textiles and clothing at Iowa State University in Ames, says expectations for women have grown more conservative over the past decade, with muted colors and modest cuts.
She surveyed corporate workers in charge of hiring in 1991 and again this year, and finds they're favoring a look that "increasingly resembles men's traditional tailored suits."
In Houston, says Texas image consultant Toya Owens-Shepard, born-again dandies in the corporate ranks have become so rabid that they'll tattle on co-workers who aren't dressed to code. Now that expectations are clearer, she says, "they're all fashion experts."
Still, it's not a coup of the three-piece suit: Casual chaos broadened wardrobe possibilities from the CEO on down. It was, in part, a generational shift: Just as hippies put denim on the style map, Gen X swept in with casual demands.
After decades in which adults assumed they'd need a wardrobe just for work, "young people ... were appalled at the idea they might have to spend money on clothes just for their job," says image consultant Ginger Burr of Somerville, Mass.
But without strict guidelines, togs became a tangle. When "business casual" started, explains Marjorie Brody, founder of the Jenkintown, Pa., consultancy Brody Communications, it was "country-club casual: very nice slacks and a very good shirt ... and a navy blue blazer."
History of men's suits
But that idea launched a downward spiral from "classic casual," with stylish pants or skirts, to "resort casual" sundresses and Bermuda shorts, or "dress down" torn T-shirts and jeans.
Though employees often relished their new freedom, some experts say it made maintenance of work roles harder: Suddenly, you'd come to work in gardening clothes -- and tend million-dollar crops.