ERODE THE CODE Published June 24, 1996 Previous columns by Harry Goldstein	The very concept of a dress code rubs me the wrong way. Seems to me that if you have little or no face-to-face contact with people outside of the organization, it shouldn't matter what you wear. I'm stuck in front of a computer all day, staring at a screen, phone receiver crammed between my shoulder and ear. If I have to spend eight hours chained to a desk, why not be comfortable? A lot has been made of the "casual day" trend in corporate offices over the last few years, with some grumbling that this signifies a slide toward sloppiness and unprofessionalism, that people used to putting on the same outfit, or at least same sort of outfit (read: uniform, whether it's a UPS outfit or a blue suit, white shirt and power tie), have trouble adjusting to wearing casual clothes to the office. Corporate policy-makers themselves are confused, and they have wasted countless reams of paper and hours of thought trying to come up with acceptable guidelines, all of which has ended up only further confusing and annoying employees. Indeed, humorist Jim Kokoris has gone so far as to say, "Across America, men are now being forced to converse with their wives in the morning, are now being forced to ask questions that were once considered beneath them. In bedrooms and bathrooms everywhere, men are asking: 'Does this match' and 'How does this look' and 'What do you mean red doesn't go with purple?' I mean, it has come to this." Well, Jimbo, I don't think that's particularly funny (heaven forbid husbands should actually have to talk to their wives in the morning!) or accurate. If you think men are that brain-dead when it comes to clothing themselves, maybe it's time you peeked out of the closet you've been trapped in with your "12 blue suits" and check out the real world.
I come in a coat and tie -- the first day.	As far as I'm concerned, everyday should be casual day, or rather, come-as-you-are day. Admittedly, I come to work dressed in a coat and tie -- the first day. After that, I make it my mission to erode the dress code. I like to establish my wardrobe gradually so as not to attract immediate notice. First, I loosen the tie mid-morning of the second day and leave it that way all week. My ties themselves become more and more eclectic, running the gamut from short, fat 40's zoot suit ties I find on the street, to string ties, on up to bolo's or elaborately pattered 70's ties, on down to skinny new wave 80's ties, the kind Gary Numan might have worn when he sang "Here at my desk, I feel safest of all...." or something like that.
It only takes one free-thinking individual to change attitudes.	Colleagues soon follow suit. Over the years, I've noticed that it takes only one free-thinking individual to change the attitudes of many others who are fed up with absurd rules but don't have the temerity to do something about them. All the full-time jobs I've had over the last ten years have posed the same challenge: how far can I go in expressing my personality in the workplace? Dress is literally a code, and the way people respond to your clothes is one indicator of how they respond to you as a person. After all, clothes make the (wo)man -- or at least the fashion industry would have us think so. To me, the first indicator of office tolerance inevitably is how people respond to my evolving dress. Much of this depends, of course, on how far I go. My first full-time job when I came to New York was as an assistant (uh, secretary) to the vice-president of trade sales at Orchard Books, a children's publisher. Having had the impression that publishing houses were pretty lax in their collective attitude towards corporate dress, I was disappointed to find that my boss, a former Marine Corps drill instructor, was a stickler for a coat and tie.
My coup-de-gras: I wore my girlfriend's favorite dress.	Within a few weeks, I had stopped wearing a jacket to work, and I soon forged an alliance with the sub-rights assistant, who also balked at having to dress up to sit behind a desk. Between us we managed to shed ties altogether in less than a month. We took advantage of so-called "casual Fridays" instituted over the summer and pushed the envelope to include most, and soon, all of the week. By the time Halloween rolled around, the office was primed for what I consider my coup de gras: while my sub-rights friend wore fangs throughout the day and the production assistant did her hair up in Pippi Longstocking pig-tails, I wore my girlfriend's favorite dress. Like Dennis Rodman says in his autobiography, Bad as I Wanna To Be, "....it's just another way I can show all the sides of Dennis Rodman. I'm giving you the whole package, I'm becoming the all-around person." Maybe next year I'll try dressing up as Dennis dressing up as Madonna. Or maybe I'll just put on some worn-out Levi's and my favorite vintage golf shirt and walk into work as myself. That's sure to scare someone. Harry Goldstein is a writer and editor living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in Utne Reader, American Book Review, Promethean, AltX, word.com, and other periodicals. © 1996 Harry Goldstein, All Rights Reserved