In the 1980s and 1990s a common piece of advice for people working in the professional managerial class was to ‘dress for the job you want, not for

A good live-streaming setup is a well-tailored suit.

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2021-06-21 09:00:03

In the 1980s and 1990s a common piece of advice for people working in the professional managerial class was to ‘dress for the job you want, not for the job you have.’ Throughout these decades, folks dressed aspirationally—a culture of power suits and padded shoulders. All this status-jockeying came at a high cost. Tailoring, dry cleaning, and the attendant rituals of maintaining everything to and from the office. Shoeshines, pressing services, taxi fees, and a general restriction of mobility.

At the apotheosis of aspirational PMC office culture, Silicon Valley utopianism intervened. From the late 90s, a sort of casual revolution asserted itself. Billionaire tech CEOs wore cheap, comfortable and functional clothing, and the status hierarchy was undermined.

Aspirational office attire persisted in conservative corners of the working world, as vestigial as barristers’ wigs, but the mass-cultural sense was that we would heretofore be judged not by our clothing, but by our productive output.