WORKPLACE ATTIRE To make employees more presentable, employers turn to stricter dress codes

Women often have more problems than men choosing proper apparel.
STAMFORD ADVOCATE
The menswear designer Joseph Abboud couldn't help but get ticked when two investment bankers trying to woo him as a client arrived at his New York office wearing white, button-down shirts with their sleeves rolled up.
No suit jackets and no ties ultimately meant no sale to the designer, who was so annoyed by their relaxed attire, he ignored their pitch. It didn't help that they mistook the die-hard Boston Red Sox fan for a Yankees man.
"I think they were trying to send the message that they were young, hip and aggressive," Abboud said. "But they blew it because they offended me by being too casual. I make suits. I make ties. I hate to pick on them, but how can you come and see me and not know enough to dress up?"
The bankers, who Abboud said may have been perfectly qualified to invest his money, sabotaged themselves with their casual dress.
Sloppy is out
Making fashion blunders in the workplace is no casual problem, style experts and business consultants say. Dressed-down employees, they say, are exerting an adverse effect on the workplace and fashion as employers rethink their business-casual attitudes.
"I'm selling more jackets and suits," said Abboud, who welcomes the change for reasons of style as well as profit. "It's about time, because in my opinion, the workplace had just gotten too sloppy."
Sherry Maysonave, a style and business consultant, has been called on recently to help corporations address the deteriorating appearance of employees sporting flip-flops, exposed tattoos and cleavage, work boots, dance-club attire and looks better suited for yard work than meeting customers.
"I call it casual sabotage. There is sometimes a really fine line between what's appropriate casual attire and what isn't," said Maysonave, author of "Casual Power" (Empowerment Enterprises, $29.95), a new book that gives precise lessons about how to "dress down for success."
Harder for women
Still, some people just don't get it."
Men, she said, tend to err by not dressing as if they mean business: wearing untucked shirts and sneakers, and not looking pressed and pulled together.
Women, Maysonave said, tend to violate workplace decorum by confusing what's in style with what's appropriate.
"I think women are terribly challenged these days and have it the hardest when it comes to dressing for work because their options are so varied," said Abboud, who touches on the topic in his new memoir, "Threads" (Harper Collins, $25.95).
They can show up at the office in some slinky or trendy thing thinking they look great. And they may. But not at work.
Men, he said, can usually salvage attire that's too casual by throwing on "a nice sport coat." Women, he said, tend to be stuck with their blunders for the workday.
Maysonave said such style errors are not always a worker's fault. The biggest challenge many contemporary professionals face is dress code ambiguity.
Stricter dress codes
"One issue you have these days is the workplace is often a varied environment," she said. "You may have a sales force, a creative team, maybe even a corporate fitness staff all working in the same building. Those positions all call for different standards of dress and it can leave people really confused about what's acceptable and what isn't." As a result, Maysonave said, companies are beginning to spell out do's and don'ts.
Some clients have called on her in recent months for advice about making their dress codes more restrictive. Items on the out list have included flip-flops, jeans, exposed bellies, underwear (goodbye peek-a-boo thongs) and even open-toe shoes.
Although Maysonave said confidentiality agreements keep her from naming clients, some have gone so far as to adopt formal dress codes requiring employees to wear suits, jackets and closed-toe dress shoes all year long.
"Sometimes," she said, "it's easier to say what's out than what's in." For example, at Xerox Corp., based in Stamford, Conn., sneakers, flip-flops and jeans are not allowed, a company spokesman, Kara Choquette, said. Still, Choquette said Xerox has not felt the need to toughen its overall standards, instead adopting a "business appropriate" dress code in its Stamford headquarters.
Dress appropriately
"What we expect is for people to dress in a way that's appropriate for what they are doing on a particular day," she said. "Maybe it's because we have a mature work force, but we haven't had a lot of problems with people following those guidelines." And indeed it's companies with young work forces that most often turn to Maysonave for help.
Maysonave said employees in their twenties seem to have the most trouble doing casual right. It's probably because they were raised by parents who dressed more casually for the office than their grandparents, she adds. "They don't have a notion of the basics," she said.
Those basics include not exposing too much skin, looking refined even in something as casual as denim (when it's allowed) and dressing a notch above your current position, said Stacy Holmen, a Wilton, Conn.-based sales representative for the Worth Collection, a line of luxury clothes sold directly in private homes and trunk shows.
The essential jacket
Men can get casual dress right by going with well-tailored basics in serious colors, said Abboud, who favors gray and browns if you want to get away from more serious navy or pinstripes. Keep a good blazer hanging in your office or cubicle for the days when the boss or an important client shows up, he advised.
"You can never go wrong with a jacket," said Abboud.
Just ask those investment bankers he sent back to Wall Street in their rolled-up shirt sleeves.