You're not fooling anyone on that vid-conference call: Walmart says shirt sales soaring, pants not pulled up With workers opting to telecommute and dial into video conferencing amid the coronavirus lockdowns, where possible, sales of formalwear are up... partially. Walmart, the world's biggest company by revenue with $0.5tn in annual sales, reports that people are buying more dress shirts yet fewer pants (trousers for you Brits, lest …
As we've seen the parade of charlatans and spivs in suits impart falsehoods and make catastrophic strategy choices over what has felt like an aeon but only been a matter of weeks, a dangerous and useless nincompoop doesn't become competent by wearing the ridiculous accoutrements that comprise "business wear".
I know this pales in to insignificance against Covid 19 but I hope the sudden and rapid change to more working from home puts the final nail in the coffin of the suit and tie as essential clothing to go to work in. We're being forced to accept doctors wearing bin liners yet not one person would protest at being treated by a person dressed in such manner, the ability to perform their role and the merits of their skillset are far more relevant.
We've currently got a Chancellor who hasn't even started shaving yet, delivering a £300+ billion spending package wearing what looks like a suit his mum has bought for him (But probably cost more than my entire wardrobe) and she's made sure there's a couple of months growth in it. We've also seen him in a hoody at a desk pretending to use a computer and manage the economy.
Neither Covid19 or the economy will be resolved by a single or double breasted suit, ties have been found wanting and Oxfords or brogues in black or brown have so far had limited effect.
The people who have imparted the most wisdom and value have been those experts at home over Skype using their grey matter to provide information for us unwashed. I've become seriously concerned about the wellbeing of our academic community's bad choices for décor in their spare rooms but not given a second thought for what they were wearing.
A nice suit is a wonderful thing to wear on occasion and if you want to wear a suit and tie to work then please feel free to do so, or put a shirt on to use Teams but they don't give you special powers, you're just a person overdressed in a chair that's ruining your posture, you're a bad Vincent Adultman pastiche.
Clothing keeps you warm and stops others being put off by your interesting bits, when we build the new normal after Covid19's effects have waned let us kill off business casual, smart casual, formal business and what other nonsense we've let permeate our thinking. Never again should we mistake looking smart for actual smarts. The people who will develop the treatments and eventual vaccine won't be wearing smart clothes, the people who try to monetise the vaccine will definitely be wearing suits though.
As for Johnson, his habit of selecting suits that look like he is in the middle of putting it back on, quickly, doesn't make him our Churchill. It just reveals his lack of overall competence. Looking the part isn't anywhere near enough, being capable is what butters the parsnips
I wish I could find the Dilbert cartoon "What your clothes say about you". The sharply dressed oily cad, the peon in an ill fitting suit, and the guy in shorts, sandals and tie-dye tee shirt "I'm the only one who knows how the IT system works; treat me like God".
Anonymous Cowherder: "What you wear is irrelevant" - Have an upvote.
I worked for a company, that got bought by a larger company, that then outsourced it's IT to another company, so have seen some management fads. First company, formal attire, shirts and ties. Tie was mandatory. We got bought, casual wear, jeans are OK, Express Yourselves! So jeans and long sleeved tees it was. We got outsourced, 'smart casual', so shirts polos, chinos, dress trousers, tie was not mandatory. At no point did I look at my self in the mirror, and think 'what would the guy in the tie do?''
Well yes, quite. If you need a shirt for working from home, surely you already had one for going to the office, and no-one can see whether it's clean and pressed in a tiny window over a low-bandwidth video stream.
It couldn't possibly be that Wally-world have made the whole thing up as a viral marketing ploy, could it.
I doubt Wally World is making up the numbers. I am not sure how many people are video conferencing at home vs screen sharing. With my company we screen share but almost never video conference internally. Plus our dress code in the office was business casual with ties being very optional.
If the sales are driven by anything, it is probably because getting the shirts nicely pressed is not always that easy so it is simpler to buy them.
See the danish reporter here, Jesper Steinmetz. Full suit on top, reporting from the lawn in front of the white house.
As for trousers and footwear see the image in top of article.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/danish-tv-reporter-is-all-business-up-top-all-party-down-below-9633505.html
I agree completely, I have no interest in a moving mugshot,... most video conferencing apps allow you to use a static pic, and that's good enough, file and screen sharing are far more productive than stacked up rows of faces, like that composite they used to have in 'University Challenge'.
Are all these shirts they're selling really tiny, by any chance?
https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-06-07
I can't believe Dilbert's been going 30 years. If I recall correctly it first came to the UK in Eddie Shah's pioneering but ill-fated Today newspaper, which barely anyone remembers any more.
But wearing pants/trousers would necessitate wearing underwear.... (now try getting THAT image out of your head).
"people are buying more dress shirts yet fewer pants (trousers for you Brits, lest anyone get the wrong idea about what's happening here)"
I'm a Brit, and we have always referred to trousers as pants. Underwear is "undies". But then I was born in '85, so I'm classed as "millennial".
Icon because let's hope you're not conferencing in your undies, and had a bad vindaloo the night before. Things could get a bit.....brown!
I first imagined folks checking in to the video conference in white tie, or at least Tuxedos (Yes, the ladies too, where have you been?)
Of course I was also amused by imagining the market for tops exceeding that for bottoms. Have the B&D clubs disappeared?
Lastly, we (in engineering) used to call the ties worn by the MIS guys as their EBCDIC Flag. (yes, some time ago...)
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