The apparel oft proclaims the man.
I’ll never forget it, it was 2010, on the walk to the train station. There was a homeless man sat on steps. Old guy, huge beard. We made eye contact, he took a swig from his bottle, he looked me up and down and in and in a moment of clarity said…
I bet you’re a f@@%ing Web Designer.
It felt like an epic burn mostly because, well, he was right at the time I was a web designer.
The apparel oft proclaims the man
As Shakespeare once said.
We do dress the same to because we’re in the same tribe. To feel like we belong.
The trend, see below, of CEOs and VCs in Patagonia vests. See the CEOs of AT&T, Uber and Amazon back in 2017.
Read more from the New York Times
We do judge others on what they are wearing, our clothes do say something about us.
Of course these things are subtle, in fact the longer we work or hang with a group the more likely we are to dress in a similar way.
When I worked for Microsoft in the 2010s I used to joke the uniform was a blue shirt and desert khaki trousers / pants. In stark contrast, you could tell the Xbox people as they looked like they were straight out of a Nu-Metal band.
I’m sure you are now thinking about what you wear. What does it say about you? How has it changed? How will it change?
How do I dress now? I work with CEOs, mostly tech founders so I do adopt that dress code. I rarely wear a shirt, a wool jersey and jeans. I do bridge the divide and I work with large cooperates who are very much the tie-less shirt or blouse. Darker jeans, never trainers or sneakers. Like Albert Einstein I own 5 of the same item of clothing.