Hacker News Reader

Comment by dandare | Hacker News Reader

European here: when visiting my company HQ I was surprised how casual Americans dress for work. I am not saying devs should wear suit and tie, nothing like that, but even my bosses boss* was wearing what looked like a rumpled sweater with worn out jeans. And I don't mean like fashion statement rumpled and worn out, more like the "great depression" crumpled and worn out. Jules and Vincent in their new t-shirts would fit in perfectly. Another thing I noticed was the absolute lack of color and variation in the outdoor clothing, at least in the morning at Manhattan, almost everyone - men and women - was wearing dark blue or black, no exceptions.

*EDIT: clarification - I am talking about a VP in a $1b company.

View on HN

Not quite 20 years ago I did my first consulting work in Europe. I was concerned as I did not have business clothes. I had only worked for and consulted for companies in the western part of the US. I knew that European dress standards were higher than the US, and even that East Coast standards were higher. When I visited my sister's then-Big-Five company she had me change my socks as I apparently wasn't dressed up enough.

So I went out and bought some new clothes. Not business shirt/jacket/slacks/etc. but still a button down shirt instead of T-shirt or polo shirt.

Now, this was Sweden, which I visited for a couple of years for this consulting project. Towards the end of the years, I talked to one of my co-workers about me having to buy new clothes. He was quizzical. "But in Sweden we dress down compared to other countries."

My reply - "Exactly. And I had to dress a step higher than I usually do."

As you can tell, I'm not an East Coast person. I visited NYC once in fall, and was surprised that I was the only one wearing a white T-shirt. The same sister commented that it was after Labor Day, and in that part of the country they don't really wear white once summer ends.

> "But in Sweden we dress down compared to other countries."

That's very surprising to me. To me, the Swedish think more about their looks than any other country.

I don't think they are contradicting statements. My impression is that Sweden is more casual, but also more calculated, while continental Europeans are more formal but just throw on a suit and are done with it.

This is basically any trendy city though - you could say the same thing about Brooklyn or Paris.

In a business environment.

Compare https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sweden+business+office&t=ffsb&iax=... with https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+business+office&t=ffsb&iar... .

The people in the Germany pictures are more likely to be wearing a dress shirt. The people who wear a business jacket in the Sweden pictures are less likely to be wearing a tie.

My experience is also that people (or at least managers) in the UK also tend to wear suits, with ties, more than in Sweden.

Wearing a suit is only weakly correlated with dressing well or caring about your looks. Someone wearing jeans and a t-shirt can appear better dressed and more caring about their looks than someone wearing a suit.

Well, .... yes.

I was explaining that my use of "dress down" was in a business context. And it's not like I have a pan-European experience. My account was a chance to tell an anecdote which supported the OP's views.

In an environment where it's expected/acceptable to come in a lousy suit, someone caring about their looks and well dressed in nice jeans and t-shirt would be considered absolutely inappropriately dressed and would be requested to "dress up" next time.

> I visited NYC once in fall, and was surprised that I was the only one wearing a white T-shirt. The same sister commented that it was after Labor Day, and in that part of the country they don't really wear white once summer ends.

This isn’t really a thing. Plenty of people wear white sweaters, coats, etc. in winter.

That visit was 15 years ago.

Style do change. As https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/labor-day-white-fashio... writes (in 2016):

> More recently, fashion magazines have moved away from the rule and regularly put out suggestions on how to wear fall and winter whites. A 2011 People poll shows nearly 60% of respondents would totally wear white after Labor Day, and 30% would consider it, depending on the outfit. That means only about 10% of people thought white was totally verboten.

That poll shouldn't be taken as anything more meaningful than to get an idea that it was a thing for some people, even recently.

Do you have a better explanation for why I didn't see anyone wearing white in early October in NYC?

I wish Germany was like that. I work as a IT consultant in a financial institution and we all have to wear suits here, even though most of the people have never seen a client in their life - they just sit behind their desks and do their daily work on a PC. So they do so - in a suit. I really don't know why Germans do this to themselves.

That's how it was when I started in the U.S. But the last 25 years have seen a huge shift in workplace dress codes in the US. Organizations that resisted discovered that it had an effect on retention -- in part because there are pocketbook implications, and perhaps in part because it is just more convenient to be able to use the same wardrobe for everything.

I just wanted to underline the phrase "effect on retention".

In North America, lots of talent (i.e. new grads) would straight up not pick companies with dress codes. Pay also tended to be not different, and "prestige" of working for X is not really a thing.

So everything changed. Also, even in the dressed up companies, they had "dress down days". People liked them. So they had more.

> "In North America, lots of talent (i.e. new grads) would straight up not pick companies with dress codes"

I made that decision almost 15 years ago. Had offers from two companies. They were similar jobs, but with one I had to wear a button up shirt, slacks, and a tie. The other I could wear shorts and flip flops in the summer, jeans and a hoodie in the winter. I chose the latter.

My boss was wearing a t-shirt to my interview. Some of the corporations (without customer facing roles) don't care for non customer facing roles. I'm in Germany, too.

> I work as a IT consultant in a financial institution and we all have to wear suits here, even though most of the people have never seen a client in their life

I had to wear a suit at a place that it would be illegal for the client to interact with me. Logic and dress codes aren't always friends.

Our auditors tend to wear large orange lanyards and badges.

Ordnung muss sein

> I really don't know why Germans do this to themselves.

It's not Germans that do this to themselves, it's people working in financial institutions. I work for a non-financial software company in Germany and nobody wears suits here unless you have an important client visit.

> I really don't know why Germans do this to themselves.

Yes, wearing a well-fitting, tailored suit made out of fabric with a good hand appropriate to the weather is a horrible (horribly comfortable) experience to subject yourself to. Having plenty of functional jacket pockets for all of your belongings is a special kind of hell.

You could wear comfortable and weather-appropriate t-shirt/sweater and jeans for about $50. A comparably comfortable and weather-appropriate suit will cost >$1000. I don't think it's hard to see why so many people don't want to wear a suit every day.

I think you need to readjust your lens. In general, people simply cannot afford a well fitting suit as their regular clothing. Some people fit into a cheap 2-piece suit from Macy's for $300 with some tailoring. Many don't. For those, the cost jump is at least to $500 for a made to measure. At which point, you're going to have to spend a lot of time trying to get the fit right and it'll take some time. And if you really want it to fit "right" then it's $3,000 per suit because you have to go bespoke. If you don't live near a very popular and fashion conscious city, you probably won't find a bespoke tailor.

Compare with $25 jeans and a $10 t-shirt that people will wear everyday, it's pretty easy to see why they go with that. Lotta sizes and fits that will eventually fit you in that price range. You can have ~7 pairs of jeans and t-shirts for the price of one very cheap fused low end fabric suit. Enough to have something different for every day of the week. You can have about 15 pairs of jeans and t-shirts for 1 made to measure suit. You can have about 70 pairs of jeans and t-shirts for the cost of one bespoke suit. That's enough jeans and t-shirts to last you over a decade.

We didn't even factor in the cost that nicer dress shoes cost and the cost of fitted dress shirts or all the accessories that can go with suits. (Belts, pocket squares, ties, bowties, tie clips, cufflinks, etc.)

> I think you need to readjust your lens.

Do you regularly buy suits, and have you bought one recently? You post is the kind of unfounded delusions people have about suits (easy to spot when someone mentions the "need" for bowties...) that keep them from buying one. Discount suits are a thing. The last suit I bought cost $50. Polyester fabric is cheap, far more durable than cotton, and comfortable. Alterations are $15-30. Department stores have sales - my summer suit is a great linen I bought for under $100 from a major department store (I think it was Nordstroms).

> That's enough jeans and t-shirts to last you over a decade.

Suits will easily last you for over a decade, as long as you don't cycle in them (that will destroy any pair of pants quickly). My first suit turns 15 years old this year and it is still in good shape. Polyester and wool fabric will outlast the cotton that jeans and t-shirts are made out of many times over. Suits as work clothing work out to be less expensive than replacing the discount $25 jeans and t-shirts that fall apart after a year.

Mail-order made-to-measure dress shirts are less expensive than off-the-rack dress shirts in department stores. Last time I ordered I paid about $40 per shirt (easier to buy in bulk once a decade... again these shirts last), department store ones were $80 and up.

I've yet to see a suit with anything approximating “plenty of functional jacket pockets for all of your belongings”; suit pockets tend to be between decorative and merely very low capacity, to avoid breaking up lines. “plenty of functional jacket pockets for all of your belongings” is something I'd only use to describe a jacket with military-style cargo pockets.

How about having the CHOICE to do this?

The neon ski jacket colors seem to have some amount of popularity with tech types.

I do think that there's some deeper truth to your "great depression" comment. As an older millennial, the last major recession left some scars. Most of the outfits I wear cost well under 0.10% of my annual income and I rarely replace anything unless it literally has holes in it.

> The neon ski jacket colors seem to have some amount of popularity with tech types.

The only one that was -40% on sale, sorry.

Where in Europe are you? In the UK people dress in darker tones in winter. I think this is partly because coats are expensive, so most people only have one or two and thus choose colours that are easy to match. I think it is also partly because the landscape in winter is quite dark. In summer you'll see much more colour about. IME the US does tend to be more conservative in terms of fashion than Europe.

Personally I dress in darker tone because I have got to known myself as extremely clumsy and always have stain of foods on my clothes. Having Dark clothes means they dont show as compared to a white T-Shirt.

Maybe it's because I work in small companies, but New Zealand and Australia seem to have the world beat for casual dress codes.

I frequently turn up to work wearing flip flops and shorts. The way I see it, and the way the company sees it, is that if I'm not interacting with anyone outside the company, it doesn't really matter what I wear. If I'm talking to customers or other companies (very rare), I'll put on chinos, boots, and a shirt.

Here in Oregon some people wear sandals and shorts to work in winter. Hiking boots at work are also sorry common.

I lived in the fashion capital of the world and most of the cities workers, outside the fashion industry, wore pretty conservative clothing; blacks, blues, browns. This came as a shock to me, an American, who expected bolder fashion choices. Coming from the tropics my fashion sense were bright colors. And over the next decade of living there I was slowly subsumed by those conservative colors.

This sounds like the typical dress in most tech companies in the UK too.

At least the ones I've worked for. Out of my friends and I, none of us care in the least what clothes we wear.

Somewhat related, but I went to Europe (I'm American)for the first time in December (Prague, Zurich, Munich, Florence, Rome) and kept noticing how much more well dressed people were on average compared to Americans. Not to suggest everyone was balling out of control in designer wear, just more "put together", so to speak.

I considered the fact that I was visiting major cosmopolitan cities, but it was true even in the airports and train stations, where you tend to see a more general slice of the population.

I noticed the opposite when I visit the US, adults wearing clothes that I normally consider for children (baseball caps, running shoes) seems pretty common, especially with men.

That could be a factor. Casual office clothes (closely related to post 90s tech culture) probably halves apparel costs for a lot of people. In a suit and tie company, the average person probably buys 2 suits and a half dozen shirts/ties pa, in addition to their casual clothes.

You should not be buying 2 suits and half a dozen shirts per year.

I wear tshirts daily and I don't even buy half a dozen tshirts per year. I have some that are over 5 years old.

Spend more than the bare minimum on your clothes, and they will last you a long time. A suit should last you at least half a decade.

I never had that kind of job. Estimates based on people I know. Most suit people I know like to have 4-5 at any given time. They also like to have the crisp look of new clothes, more noticeable in formal clothes than hoodies and t shirts. Also suit fashions tend to be fairly specific. My old suit (11 year old 3 button pinstripe that everyone had then) that I haven't worn for years looks ridiculous now, being 2-3 generations old.

I'm sure this could be optimized with better quality, better laundry, etc. Everything about clothes could be a fraction of the average costs, if we go based on first principles "what's possible." But generally, people who wear suits to work spend over €1k pa, in my circle.

*I'm not sure what the implications are for women's office clothes.

Women's office clothes are the worst: fragile, ill-fitting off the rack, difficult to tailor unless they were really expensive, and pretty much dry-clean-only (even the tops).

I had to dress "business casual" when I taught English part-time for a much lower wage than I get in my current IT job, where putting a scarf or beaded necklace on top of a long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans now makes me more dressed up than my colleagues in their printed t-shirts and athletic shoes. I save at least 100 EUR/mo not having to wear and maintain a business casual wardrobe.

Are you fairly young? One day you'll suddenly have a revelation that 5 year old t-shirts look really, really, really bad. I certainly did.

The color fades, the prints fade, they look tatty.

Same with suits, knees and bums get a sheen, stitching gets ratty, etc. Obviously depends on how expensive the suit was when you bought it. To quote Sam Vimes:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

> Are you fairly young? One day you'll suddenly have a revelation that 5 year old t-shirts look really, really, really bad. I certainly did.

I beg to differ. The condition of clothing is correlated to quality and amount and type of wear. I have some (plain) t-shirts that have lasted 10 or more years with no fading. Avoiding hot water and clothes dryers goes a very long way to making clothing last.

Your point stands on logo or lettered shirts - those do not usually age well from a style perspective.

Older people can also remember when t-shirts were thick enough that you couldn't see through them unless they got wet. Some brands now require two or even three layers before you can stop worrying if your birthmarks and tattoos are still visible.

Heavier fabrics can endure more wear.

In my experience, more expensive is usually just more expensive. I naively though the opposite, and at first just ended up paying more money for crap that lasted just as long as the cheap stuff.

If you want quality, you have to do the research.

Sometimes you're paying for the quality. Sometimes you only pay for the name.

I have polo shirts that are > 10 years old and look like new. Stuff from H&M barely lasts a season.

Yes. Not mention I hated wearing neckties. (I'm 55... things were different 30+ years ago.) That alone makes the more casual dress environment a huge boon.

It's the paradox of fashion. We want to look different, but other people want us to look the same (that's why people in uniform are considered more attractive).

A janitor's uniform is not as attractive as a Sergeant. I reckon sameness is not the attractive quality.

I asked a friend once, do you prefer men in uniform because you see men as basically interchangeable? Nah, she replied, because they’re employed and clean. Make of that what you will...

Everyone wears black in New York and London. That black winter wool coat is a UK thing.

I think it's great. Let people dress as they want and feel comfortable. The last think I need is an employer telling me how to dress.

a) american culture values rebelliousness, not 'being presumptuous' and has lost the 'proving our moral superiority to others' slant that it used to have when americans dressed up, hence huge casualness these days

b) nyc and east coast fashion has largely been about dark colors / clean lines and 'chic' since at least the 50s/60s and probably since the 20s or earlier.. things will be hugely different color-wise outside of the northeast (dc up through boston corridor)

I was due for a new real winter coat this year, and black and drab are as common as vehical and pedestrian collisions this time of year. Fortunately, Moose Knuckes: https://www.mooseknucklescanada.com/bomber-ballistic/

Does the VP deliver value for the company? If so then it doesn't matter.

tbh you'll find a similar culture of casual dress in the UK too, depending on what industry you are in. Corporate IT and finance companies can mostly be "business casual", but venture into the media/creative industries, along with the usual tech companies and startups, it's mostly wear whatever you want.

So long as you fit in, of course. Many a tech company recruiter has shot a great candidate down for wearing a suit instead of a pair of shorts and a t-shirt with pizza down the front.

venture into the media/creative industries, along with the usual tech companies and startups, it's mostly wear whatever you want.

Sure, but most of the people there wearing whatever they want are pretty well dressed.

it's mostly wear whatever you want.

Whatever you want that’s deemed fashionable by your peers. There’s still a dress code, and it’s strictly enforced, it’s just not written down anywhere.

How many people use “suit” as a pejorative?

The first time I ever left this country(except for say Canada) I went to Athens- and if you've ever been to Athens you know it's kind of a shithole. Awesome- I love Greece- but Athens is fairly gritty. Anyway, I was shocked by how well everyone dressed.

Go Banana Slugs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com