Dress code

Last week I attended a conference where pre-event materials advised me that the dress code would be “casual.” Not helpful to me, although not as baffling as  “business casual.” For me, sitting in your underwear watching television is casual. Sitting in your underwear doing work email is business casual. But I have learned though hard experience that not everyone shares my views on these matters.

I’ve always been a little out of tune with the dress code concept. My first job out of college was at a daily newspaper in North Platte, Nebraska. I was hired to cover agricultural news and I seized on this status as an excuse to ignore the “no jeans” policy. I rationalized that people on my beat wore boots and jeans so I would have more credibility with my sources if I wore boots and jeans. Based on similar rationale, I also drove a beat-up Chevy pickup and kept a Styrofoam spit cup in the upper left-hand drawer of my desk for my Copenhagen habit.

I admit I was not always consistent with my rationale. From time to time I would be pulled into covering the police beat yet I did not show up for work wearing a police uniform. Still, nobody ever called me on my disregard for the dress code. I had a few close calls. Once my editor directed me into his office and said that while he didn’t require that his reporters wear sport coats or suit jackets on a daily basis, he would find comfort in the knowledge that his reporters at least owned one of these items. So the next day, I went out and bought my first sport coat, to wear with jeans and boots for when I had to go somewhere fancy, like the Nebraska Cattlemen Association’s annual meeting or a church wedding.

Some years and a few jobs later I left the glamorous world of agricultural journalism and ended up in law school. Law school dress code was perfectly simple in that there was no dress code. Sure, a few openly ambitious butt-kissers (plus that one guy who wore leather pants – WTF was that about?) would show up in something other than jeans and t-shirt, but mostly it was the easy to understand “Wyoming casual” (Carhartt and/or fleece, depending on how hard the wind was blowing). Gradually, though, I realized that even in Wyoming lawyers sometimes wear suits. And also that one day soon I would need to return to the glamorous world of earning an income. So at age thirty-five I bought my first suit, a black “interview suit” complete with fitted white shirt, blue silk tie, and black wingtip shoes. My new wardrobe cost more than my first car and the whole experience left me anxious and out of sorts, as if I just made some deal with the Devil (assuming the Devil sells men’s clothing in Fort Collins, Colorado, and applies too much hair product). When an interview suit and wingtip shoes insinuate their way into your life, you’re on the fast track to a bigger and better dress code. Resistance is futile.

And so it came to pass. I’m now several years into a second career as a government attorney. I work in Washington, D.C., for a federal agency. I am not required to wear a coat and tie every day, but my jeans and boots and spit cup stashed in desk drawer days are relics of another time. My morning routine is relatively simple: stand in front of closet and decide if I’m wearing black wool trousers or navy, brown shoes or black, blue dress shirt or light blue. If I have something fancy on the day’s agenda, I pull out neckties and suit jackets and show them to my wife until I find a combination that she says matches my pants and shirt (and then I find the YouTube video that reminds me how to tie a Windsor knot).

At my "casual dress" conference last week I decided to be safe and bring what I have learned over time will make me neither the most nor least casually dressed person at the party: a pair of khakis, navy suit jacket, blue dress shirt, and brown dress shoes. Then what I do is I roll my sleeves up to my elbows and leave the jacket hanging on the back of my chair. Boom. 

The conference was for scientists and lawyers from federal and state governments and Indian tribes. For me it was a perfect case study for how professionals from various geographic locations interpret “casual” dress code and provide data to help me prepare for similar settings in the future. For purposes of my research, I focused on footwear and discovered that biologists from Southern California favored Keen or Teva sandals. As did biologists from Northern California and Colorado, except they wore socks with their sandals. Those from the Great Plains and Midwest, and those working for Indian tribes, were more likely to wear leather boots. Male lawyers from all places tended to wear those slip on dress-type shoes that are easy to take on and off at the airport. New Englanders tended to wear lightweight hiking or running shoes. I tried taking photos to document my research, with limited success. Apparently photographing people’s feet at a conference makes you some sort of fetish weirdo. At least that seemed to be the gist of the announcement before one of our breaks. The sacrifices I make for science.

I'm not looking for conference organizers to spell out exactly what to wear. This is America. We don't want the fashionistas telling us how to dress. But at the same time, most of us don't want to show up looking like they're too stupid to dress themselves appropriately. In the future I’ll probably just keep doing what I usually do: tell my wife where I’m going and why, and then show her a variety of items from my closet and pack whatever doesn’t make her frown disapprovingly or laugh out loud.