It's strange how suits became a standard for government officials, big business and everyone that want's to look "serious" in all countries over the world, it shows how the western culture conquered the entire world.
I was persuaded by a recruiter to wear a suit to interview the other day. It made me realise how lucky I am not to have to wear one every day. Seems slightly absurd to be required to wear a Victorian costume whilst writing 21st Century software.
We tend to think of gold valuable because it is pretty, and because it's pretty we wear it, which gives it market value.
In reality, this is not untrue. But more importantly, we value gold because of scarcity, and that gives this not ugly looking metal value (there's not enough gold in the world for everyone, after all). And because it is valuable, we think of it as pretty and wear it, because it shows a certain status. This is why we somehow perceive fake gold so negatively, not because it's aesthetically different but because it's worthless. We hide this fact with words like one is 'authentic' and the other is not. While really, they look the same, and they're both arbitrary metals, but one is scarce and thus not cheaply available for all, while the other is.
In fact, quite some time ago aluminium shared the role of gold, it was even scarcer (before factories produced it) and more expensive. You can find anecdotal evidence of this, e.g. Napoleon holding a banquet where the most expensive cutlery was made of aluminium for the special guests, and the regular guests had to use mere golden spoons. All of that ended when producing aluminium in a factory was discovered and the price plummeted from hundreds of dollars per some unit (can't remember) to mere pennies. Today you'd look mostly foolish wearing an aluminium chain, mostly because it's simply way less scarce.
That's why I was reminded of it by your comment about suits. It's likely true that we consider suits to be serious because they're 1) uniforms and 2) simple, hard cuts
But at the same time, that's just today's fashion. In the early days of suits they were colourful, they had rounded shapes, they were also used as uniforms etc.
In other words, I think what actually makes them 'serious' is the people wearing them. You can find a garbageman uniform, or make one, that's cleaner and more modern and slicker than a suit. But we'd immediately attach negative connotations to that uniform. In the same way gold isn't necessarily the prettiest thing, but because of meta-reasons (e.g. it being expensive, or worn by cool people), it's desired. Suits are likely pretty similar. It's the fact that important people wear suits that inspires the seriousness.
A suit is a uniform. In a more practical sense, it's a means of directing creative energy away from irrelevant causes, such as self-expression, and enabling you to put undivided focus on your work items, the processing of which benefits the business.
If everyone is in a suit, there can be no games to out-dress the rest of the playing field. The only differentiator is the price of the suit, and that story-line unfolds neatly along the sub-ordination divides. The CEO wears the most expensive suit.
Being the tech-oriented minion, you can get away with wearing a just-so suit, which is just fine by you as well. Honestly, who wants to fashion-shop for a freaking suit? The suit surely has to be the most drab and boring garment in the history of clothed mankind.
I want to fashion shop for a freaking suit. It can be a very nice experience. If you're fashion shopping to begin with, you must have a reasonable amount of disposable income. Why not spend it on a nice suit and accessories - shirts with French cuffs, stylish cufflinks, single piece leather shoes.
I bought a Gieves and Hawkes[1] suit for my wedding, and the whole Savile Row[2] experience was wonderful.
I don't need to wear a suit every day, or even every month, but if I find myself in a situation where I do need to, I
know exactly where I will be shopping for one.
I agree. There is a lot of room for self expression in a suit. Different styles, fits and cuts, length, number of buttons, etc. (There was a chap at my last work wore a suit with a neru collar). Type and weight of fabric, pinstiped, chalk striped, something less conventional, e.g a subtle check. Type and fit of shirt, collar, double single cuff. Cufflinks, tie (which come in different shapes), type of knot in tie, pocketsquare, etc.
It's all a lot of fun. I used to really enjoy shopping for suits, shirts and accessories when I was in a job that required me to wear a suit every day.
I work from home, and I've toyed with the idea of dressing up (even just a collared shirt) for exactly this reason - putting on formal attire helps me get into the proper mental state for work. I've used the same trick (suiting up every day) to keep myself productive in absolutely miserable working conditions. Sure, it'd be nice if I had the self-discipline necessary to keep myself focused, etc. regardless of what I wore---but sometimes I don't, so thankfully formal wear is another tool I can apply in those situations where I need it.
I always think people in suits look like salesmen, and I treat them with more suspicion. I know, it is not correct to be prejudiced, but so is wearing a suit in order to change how people think about you.
>Putting on formal clothes makes us feel powerful, and that changes the basic way we see the world,...
There are occasions when putting on formal clothes makes me feel more, well "formal", such as weddings and funerals. The rest of the time they make me feel constrained, confined, not empowered, and just another cog in the machine, i.e. not powerful.
>Rutchick and his co-authors found that wearing clothing that’s more formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically, rather than narrowly and about fine-grained details.
I've certainly never experienced this; I've experienced quite the opposite, in fact!
So I suspect that there are some important confounding factors involved!
[1] For me, it was never about "ho ra - go USA"-type, nationalistic pride, rather it was pride in myself and the people around me for helping to defend and serve our countrymen and others, worldwide, who were in need.
> The rest of the time they make me feel constrained, confined, not empowered, and just another cog in the machine, i.e. not powerful.
I used to feel this way too, but then I got a better fitting suit. Fit makes a huge difference both in how you look and how you feel about what you're wearing since you can stop worrying about whether you look nice or not.
> > Rutchick and his co-authors found that wearing clothing that’s more
> > formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically,
> > rather than narrowly and about fine-grained details.
>
> I've certainly never experienced this; I've experienced quite the opposite, in fact!
>
> So I suspect that there are some important confounding factors involved!
Numbers aren't available in the abstract, but I suspect that Rutchick et al's sample set was sufficiently large - at least compared to your sample size (of one). There may be confounding factors, but more data, less anecdote, would be required to substantiate the counter-claim.
This is making me consider the purchase a few suits, for use when I have meeting with upper management. I've noticed a similar causal link in my own life, but I've never had a comfortable suit, so...
Meta: I really appreciate how the Atlantic wrote up this article on a research paper. It calls out the details of the research, identifies the potential shortfalls of the research, and the actual (non-exaggerated) results - "a causal link" - all within a well written narrative. Bravo, Atlantic. Bravo.
I think that the conversation covers lots of knowns and unsurprising actions on both the suit wearer's and the suit observer's side of perception. The real conversation should be how to rid the world of formality? I personally feel ill every time I have to wear anything that others consider formal business wear. I was a technical project manager (forgive me) for a few years and I felt like a traitor every time I sat with a group of engineers who all were wearing what makes us comfortable: GNU hacker t-shirts, jeans and Dr. Martens (or variations thereof).
When I see suits, I think of keywords like "deceit" and "materialism" and "shallow". I also feel like people in suits are being subjugated, no matter how high up the totem pole they think they are. I grew up painfully poor, so I assume much of my opinion and reaction to seeing a suit comes from feeling the vast economic divide between me and people in suits, much the way I feel a sickness and anger when I see people in cars like Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar.
Suits make people think differently. But for the right reasons? I will never "suit up", personally, by choice.
Up until the keyword association, you were in a moderately defensible position. But deceit, materialism and shallow -- associating those sensations with what some people wear is some regrettable kind of -ism. How do you feel, in a group of engineers, if someone choose to not wear Dr Martens (or something comparably expensive)? If a collared shirt is worn, something casual and comfortable say, have they also abandoned everything you think they should hold dear about being an engineer?
So we should only accept the intended signaling of people's clothing choices, and never think any deeper about why they made signaling clothing choices?
There's a wide range of choices between wearing clothes that are well suited to what you'll physically be doing in them, and wearing clothes suited to signaling something about yourself, and where clothing falls in that range does say something about the wearer.
I think we should all take a second look at what clothes "mean". I maintain my distaste for expensive and overly formal clothing, since it flies in the face of poverty and those who have little in America. But I concede that it helps nobody to attack a person or front-load judgement of them based solely on their appearance...
The associations may be regrettable, but they are mine and how they got there, and how they are to be overturned, are up for debate. I don't think them wrong or right.
I do judge people by their work, especially me, and ultimately would never let just the shell tell a person's story :-)
Why apologize? One of my favorite former colleagues ever was a PM. I loved working for/with him. When he was around, he was a bit like having a personal concierge/bouncer. If anyone else in the company bothered someone who was working on one of his projects, he'd chase them away, post haste; most of the time nobody ever even got close. He wore sneakers, crappy cargo pants, and tshirts. HR hated him. He could be a bit stubborn about technical decisions when he thought they were within his area of competence, but he was a knowledgeable guy. When he wasn't needed, he left the engineers alone. Anyway, I was happy to work with this guy and I never felt like he was "above me" even though he certainly was in terms of pay.
PS I like old Mercedes diesels, when you see one, don't be angry, that car is helping to bridge the economic divide. No, really, they are dirt cheap cars, and pretty well built.
I was typing fast - "forgive me" was in case anyone who is a technical pm thought I was dragging the title through the dirt :-) My guilt had nothing to do with the role itself!
As a small counterpoint to this, though I do understand the social aspect of suits [that you disagree with], bear in mind that the entire point of the garment, silhouette aside[1], is to be an extremely comfortable piece of clothing that fits a person absolutely perfectly. The cost is a side effect of the fact tailoring is extremely time intensive, and depends on very high-quality materials (in addition to social cachet cost)
[1] by silhouette, I mean the shaping of the figure via structuring of the garment.
Full disclosure: I originally trained in tailoring before becoming a developer
An excellent point. As a maker, I have great respect for those who make in all industries (which is why this reaction I have can be frustrating). Admission: Project Runway is a favorite of mine despite its deep roots in a highly materialistic and commercial industry. I appreciate the hacker and maker ethic many of these designers represent.
> I also feel like people in suits are being subjugated, no matter how high up the totem pole they think they are.
Well, according to OP they are subject to a prisoner's dilemma and have chosen "defect" which is definitely a form of subjugation, albeit in the sense of fashion rather than economics. On this basis alone I think a certain amount of "anti-suit" culture is probably healthy, regardless of whether one believes that rebellion is just another kind of conformity or whether one believes that the economic implications mirror the fashion implications.
> When I see suits, I think of keywords like "deceit" and "materialism" and "shallow".
I tend to agree, but I think most people take an amoral approach: they look at the suit and the positive impression of "power" outweighs the negative impression of "what power does" or "how power is obtained."
Yes, the suit is often a tool for the social engineer who can sense who has the outlook that a certain cut, style, material and/or silhouette represents earned respect, and causes some people to fully drop their guard. I do wonder how different the interview process would be were we all allowed to wear whatever we felt the most comfortable in.
Clothing also alters the way people treat you, obviously. That changes the way you perceive the world, even if you're mindful of the effect.
I've never been one who minded rolling my sleeves up when needed, but I can recall several instances of both: Why it is an advantage to be dressed "nicely" and, why it isn't.
Working in a field service position (attendance at the office was required) at a medium-sized company where much of the manufacturing was done in-house, I noticed that if you were the nicest dressed technician, that you would rarely be recruited for any dirty jobs that came up.
Working in the engineering dep't for the same company, if you dressed well and kept your work area neat, salespeople would often parade clients through your area, disturbing you.
I took a psych class in high school and one of our assignments was to dress up on Fridays for 6 weeks and record how we thought about ourselves on those days and how others treated us.
All I remember about it now is getting a lot of compliments when I wore a tie.
There's a video somewhere on the behind the scenes of the movie "Master and Commander" and one of the things they talk about is how the officer's period uniforms caused the cast to instantly stand upright and at attention and start to behave the way the director wanted them to. They attributed it to the oversized, stiff, collars forcing the actors heads up.
Did this make them think different? I don't know, but it gives them an "in charge" effect during the movie that must send subtle signals back and forth between officers and crew.
As somebody with an 18" neck and short arms, one thing I've incredibly happy about is the near death of the tie. It's finally become acceptable (and stylish) to wear a suit without a tie. Finding shirts that fit my frame is nearly impossible and the number of collar burns I've come home with from keeping the top button closed and a tie on is something I hope I never have to deal with again.
Disdain for the suit is a counterculture (aka American mainstream culture) touchstone and as such is just as much an example of group membership as wearing a suit is for a different group of people. This is why you frequently hear stories on here of people not getting hired because the candidate wore a suit.
This is interesting in itself, but is it the next logical version of "the suit is back!" as described in Graham's PR article? http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Is anybody really surprised by this research? I doubt it. Humans love to form exclusive groups. A suit is nearly non-functional and mostly symbolic: I have a job where I am "important" (and I make money). A uniform on a police officer or a doctor or a firefighter? It helps people to distinguish them from the rest of the crowd. A suit on the other hand is a generic line drawn in the sand between people, I feel.
58 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadWe tend to think of gold valuable because it is pretty, and because it's pretty we wear it, which gives it market value.
In reality, this is not untrue. But more importantly, we value gold because of scarcity, and that gives this not ugly looking metal value (there's not enough gold in the world for everyone, after all). And because it is valuable, we think of it as pretty and wear it, because it shows a certain status. This is why we somehow perceive fake gold so negatively, not because it's aesthetically different but because it's worthless. We hide this fact with words like one is 'authentic' and the other is not. While really, they look the same, and they're both arbitrary metals, but one is scarce and thus not cheaply available for all, while the other is.
In fact, quite some time ago aluminium shared the role of gold, it was even scarcer (before factories produced it) and more expensive. You can find anecdotal evidence of this, e.g. Napoleon holding a banquet where the most expensive cutlery was made of aluminium for the special guests, and the regular guests had to use mere golden spoons. All of that ended when producing aluminium in a factory was discovered and the price plummeted from hundreds of dollars per some unit (can't remember) to mere pennies. Today you'd look mostly foolish wearing an aluminium chain, mostly because it's simply way less scarce.
That's why I was reminded of it by your comment about suits. It's likely true that we consider suits to be serious because they're 1) uniforms and 2) simple, hard cuts
But at the same time, that's just today's fashion. In the early days of suits they were colourful, they had rounded shapes, they were also used as uniforms etc.
In other words, I think what actually makes them 'serious' is the people wearing them. You can find a garbageman uniform, or make one, that's cleaner and more modern and slicker than a suit. But we'd immediately attach negative connotations to that uniform. In the same way gold isn't necessarily the prettiest thing, but because of meta-reasons (e.g. it being expensive, or worn by cool people), it's desired. Suits are likely pretty similar. It's the fact that important people wear suits that inspires the seriousness.
Anyway, that's just one hypothesis of course :)
A suit is a uniform. In a more practical sense, it's a means of directing creative energy away from irrelevant causes, such as self-expression, and enabling you to put undivided focus on your work items, the processing of which benefits the business.
If everyone is in a suit, there can be no games to out-dress the rest of the playing field. The only differentiator is the price of the suit, and that story-line unfolds neatly along the sub-ordination divides. The CEO wears the most expensive suit.
Being the tech-oriented minion, you can get away with wearing a just-so suit, which is just fine by you as well. Honestly, who wants to fashion-shop for a freaking suit? The suit surely has to be the most drab and boring garment in the history of clothed mankind.
I bought a Gieves and Hawkes[1] suit for my wedding, and the whole Savile Row[2] experience was wonderful.
I don't need to wear a suit every day, or even every month, but if I find myself in a situation where I do need to, I know exactly where I will be shopping for one.
[1] http://www.gievesandhawkes.com/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savile_Row
It's all a lot of fun. I used to really enjoy shopping for suits, shirts and accessories when I was in a job that required me to wear a suit every day.
'Cause I'd rather invest it.
I guess for one-off things like weddings, fine, but other than that, not my thing.
Try to take out a mortgage dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and flip flops, and then try to do it dressed in a suit.
It sucks, but it's a real thing.
It's as if a leather jacket, white T-shirt, jeans and Doc boots had become the mark of tedious conformity.
Returned to the same shop in a collared shirt. The salesman wouldn't leave me alone.
Next time I return, It'll be back in my scruffy attire, ready to make a purchase.
There are occasions when putting on formal clothes makes me feel more, well "formal", such as weddings and funerals. The rest of the time they make me feel constrained, confined, not empowered, and just another cog in the machine, i.e. not powerful.
>Rutchick and his co-authors found that wearing clothing that’s more formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically, rather than narrowly and about fine-grained details.
I've certainly never experienced this; I've experienced quite the opposite, in fact!
So I suspect that there are some important confounding factors involved!
> A suit is a uniform. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9476661 Yes, but unlike a uniform, when wearing a suit I don't experience any sense of community pride[1].
[1] For me, it was never about "ho ra - go USA"-type, nationalistic pride, rather it was pride in myself and the people around me for helping to defend and serve our countrymen and others, worldwide, who were in need.
I used to feel this way too, but then I got a better fitting suit. Fit makes a huge difference both in how you look and how you feel about what you're wearing since you can stop worrying about whether you look nice or not.
Hence, I only "suspect" that there are confounding factors, I do not in fact "claim" that there are confounding factors.
Meta: I really appreciate how the Atlantic wrote up this article on a research paper. It calls out the details of the research, identifies the potential shortfalls of the research, and the actual (non-exaggerated) results - "a causal link" - all within a well written narrative. Bravo, Atlantic. Bravo.
When I see suits, I think of keywords like "deceit" and "materialism" and "shallow". I also feel like people in suits are being subjugated, no matter how high up the totem pole they think they are. I grew up painfully poor, so I assume much of my opinion and reaction to seeing a suit comes from feeling the vast economic divide between me and people in suits, much the way I feel a sickness and anger when I see people in cars like Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar.
Suits make people think differently. But for the right reasons? I will never "suit up", personally, by choice.
Up until the keyword association, you were in a moderately defensible position. But deceit, materialism and shallow -- associating those sensations with what some people wear is some regrettable kind of -ism. How do you feel, in a group of engineers, if someone choose to not wear Dr Martens (or something comparably expensive)? If a collared shirt is worn, something casual and comfortable say, have they also abandoned everything you think they should hold dear about being an engineer?
There's a wide range of choices between wearing clothes that are well suited to what you'll physically be doing in them, and wearing clothes suited to signaling something about yourself, and where clothing falls in that range does say something about the wearer.
I do judge people by their work, especially me, and ultimately would never let just the shell tell a person's story :-)
Why apologize? One of my favorite former colleagues ever was a PM. I loved working for/with him. When he was around, he was a bit like having a personal concierge/bouncer. If anyone else in the company bothered someone who was working on one of his projects, he'd chase them away, post haste; most of the time nobody ever even got close. He wore sneakers, crappy cargo pants, and tshirts. HR hated him. He could be a bit stubborn about technical decisions when he thought they were within his area of competence, but he was a knowledgeable guy. When he wasn't needed, he left the engineers alone. Anyway, I was happy to work with this guy and I never felt like he was "above me" even though he certainly was in terms of pay.
PS I like old Mercedes diesels, when you see one, don't be angry, that car is helping to bridge the economic divide. No, really, they are dirt cheap cars, and pretty well built.
[1] by silhouette, I mean the shaping of the figure via structuring of the garment.
Full disclosure: I originally trained in tailoring before becoming a developer
Well, according to OP they are subject to a prisoner's dilemma and have chosen "defect" which is definitely a form of subjugation, albeit in the sense of fashion rather than economics. On this basis alone I think a certain amount of "anti-suit" culture is probably healthy, regardless of whether one believes that rebellion is just another kind of conformity or whether one believes that the economic implications mirror the fashion implications.
> When I see suits, I think of keywords like "deceit" and "materialism" and "shallow".
I tend to agree, but I think most people take an amoral approach: they look at the suit and the positive impression of "power" outweighs the negative impression of "what power does" or "how power is obtained."
I've never been one who minded rolling my sleeves up when needed, but I can recall several instances of both: Why it is an advantage to be dressed "nicely" and, why it isn't.
Working in a field service position (attendance at the office was required) at a medium-sized company where much of the manufacturing was done in-house, I noticed that if you were the nicest dressed technician, that you would rarely be recruited for any dirty jobs that came up.
Working in the engineering dep't for the same company, if you dressed well and kept your work area neat, salespeople would often parade clients through your area, disturbing you.
All I remember about it now is getting a lot of compliments when I wore a tie.
Did this make them think different? I don't know, but it gives them an "in charge" effect during the movie that must send subtle signals back and forth between officers and crew.
As somebody with an 18" neck and short arms, one thing I've incredibly happy about is the near death of the tie. It's finally become acceptable (and stylish) to wear a suit without a tie. Finding shirts that fit my frame is nearly impossible and the number of collar burns I've come home with from keeping the top button closed and a tie on is something I hope I never have to deal with again.
http://www.rdouglas.net/
Properly tailored clothing will change your life.