Dialogue: Out with the tyranny of the suit and the tie

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

What's the difference between doing business on Mondays and Fridays? Dunno, say the human resources consultants I've asked. Why is it okay to turn up at the office in an open-necked shirt and sneakers on Friday but not on any other day of the week?

The question is relevant because the Suits are going mufti on Fridays - but no one can tell me why. Is it just that someone, somewhere started it and, lemming-like, they all ... ahem ... followed suit?

Possibly it's because it's the end of the week and we're all starting to relax for the weekend, said one consultant.

Oh yeah? Friday is the day most of us are at our most frenzied trying to get work out of the way.

Another consultant said that in most companies those who may be seeing clients or are in heavy negotiations still have to wear suits. But you can see how the mufti movement would momentumise as a result of that move. A client, too, will want to be in casual clothes on Fridays so he won't want to see anyone that day, and so on. It could become a four-day-week for executives.

(Did you like momentumise? Probably not. It's just that a mate of mine told me that while waiting for a coffee in a New York restaurant he was asked by a waiter if he had been beveraged yet. My friend was offended but I pointed out that Shakespeare loved to transform nouns into verbs.

Have you been fooded yet? No, but I've been menued. On reflection, I guess it's a style that won't gather momentum.)

The formal suit-and-tie has been a tyrant in its time. A university professor in England used to say to his students: "You must think the unthinkable and say the unsayable but wear a dark suit and tie while you're doing it or no one will listen."

And corporate business has always been tribal, with junior executives sedulously following the dress code of their bosses.

Perhaps the roadmenders union could further confuse the issue by insisting, under the Employment Relations Act, on the right to their own mufti day and turn up on Fridays in suits and ties.

Joking aside, though, let's hope this move towards smart casual dress is progress along the road towards dress equality for men with women.

One Saturday afternoon a few years ago, I was sitting in the private bar of a pub with a mate when the bar manager came over and said my mate would have to leave and go into the public bar because he was wearing jandals.

I nudged my friend and nodded towards a well-dressed young woman a few tables away who was wearing gold designer thongs. My mate then said adamantly that he would leave only if that sheila in the thongs had to go, too.

The bar manager went and got the hotel manager who also, in more authoritative tones, asked my mate to leave because not only was he wearing jandals, but shorts as well.

My friend said he would leave if that sheila left because she was wearing culottes which were, after all, really shorts.

The manager said they were designer clothes and my mate said his were designed in Indonesia and he reckoned that hers probably were, too, if we could look at the label.

By this time, the burly young companion of the well-dressed young woman was becoming openly truculent towards my mate, who was pointing at her legs and remonstrating vigorously with the manager to throw her out.

It could have turned nasty had my friend not kicked off his jandals and said bare feet were obviously okay, pointing to a well-dressed middle-aged woman who had dropped her shoes on the floor and was wiggling her toes as she sat on a bar stool. The manager could see the issue blowing up into something as big as Jonathan Hunt's shirts or Jenny Shipley's bloomers, so he shook his head and retreated.

That was a temporary victory for the sort of garment freedom women have. The necktie imposes about the same degree of discomfort on men as the whalebone corset did on women last century. They have won their freedom; why haven't we won ours?

That indefatigable dress reformer, Max Cryer - who once said he was happy to wear a tie if someone was paying him - reckons tie-wearing comes from the medieval notion that you're not showing respect if you're not uncomfortable. It's a kind of bowing and grovelling.

Those conservatives who defend drab conventional dress are fond of quoting the old Latin proverb that "clothes maketh the man" (vestis virum facit). But I happen to know that was but the preamble to a declaration that said in full, "Clothes maketh the man very uncomfortable if they're too tight around the neck (vestis virum facit tightum neckus).

The hope for the future rests with the bright young men in the media and IT industries who refuse to buckle down to the corporate convention.

May the Force be with them.