Peggy Noonan, WSJ Columnist and Reagan White House Speech Writer
Boomers will remember that a big investment after graduating was investing in enough business attire to get through the week. A popular guide at the time “Dress for Success” by John T. Malloy who was billed as “America’s first wardrobe engineer. He helped make sure men wore long sleeve shirts and had matching belt and shoes. Women’s business attire at the time was much challenging in terms of availability and protocol.
Since then, there has been a long-term casual trend in business attire that existed long before Covid. But the pandemic drove it from “dressing down” to “dressing not.” (Be honest, how many zoom calls did you take wearing shorts or pajama bottoms?)
The topic of appropriate dress code was resurrected in recent weeks when freshman Senator John Fetterman began wear a hoodie and shorts to the senate. This has ignited a new discussion on whether we should return to traditional business attire as part of our organization’s culture.
Have we become TOO casual? Does our attire impact our performance?
WSJ columnist and Reagan White House speech writer Peggy Noonan offers some thoughts and a compelling set of questions about how our elected leaders regardless of party (and maybe others in positions of authority) should dress….and behave.
Ms. Noonan observes that “We want to be respected but no longer think we need to be respectable.” Take some time for her recent post “The Senator’s Shorts and America’s Decline.”
