Hey, Guys, Hairy Knees Are for the Beach, Not the Office

Note from Steve: I thought this was a good column overall and made sevral great points on why people should dress better. I do not, however, endore Mr. Stein's equation of the War on Terror with World War II or the Korean War. My opinion is no reflection on our brave soldiers; it is a reflection on the ass-backward leadership they serve.

By BEN STEIN

TODAY'S business workplace is not a pretty sight. No, I'm not referring to wildly overinflated C.E.O. pay, although I could be. Nor am I referring to the empty desks caused by outsourcing, although I could be referring to that, too. I am not even referring to modern cubicles and their pitiful fiberboard walls. I am referring to the men (not the women) in those cubicles.

To put it as boldly as it needs to be put, men at work these days all too often dress like total slobs, and it hurts the eyes, the spirit and, I suspect, the bottom line.

Sometimes, I get a clue of this when I go to see my lawyer and am shocked to find that men who should be wearing suits - to keep up their propriety and their sense of dignity - are wearing casual jeans and short-sleeved shirts instead. I get a whiff of it when I appear on television and see employees of major networks dressed in casual slacks and sport shirts with no ties.

But the most stunning blow came a few weeks ago when I did an industrial film on a super-advanced videoconferencing system made by a very large, very successful high-tech company. The men who worked at the company's campus in Oregon were uniformly smart and uniformly courteous, but they dressed like children at summer camp - cut-off jeans, shorts, T-shirts and sandals without socks. I asked if this was some special dress-down day and they all looked at me as if I were insane. "No," they said. "This is how we dress."

I see it in airports and on airplanes. I see it when young people come to me for interviews for a summer job dressed in baggies - gangsta-style long shorts with some of their butts showing - and have no idea that they are doing anything wrong.

I see it even at some brokerage firms, although one of the saving graces of investment banks is that the men who work at them do dress like grown-ups, and even dress beautifully in many cases.

Even the resort wear of yesteryear was far more elegant than what is now worn at work. Clothing that grown men used to wear to clean the garage is now what they wear to write briefs and prepare for oral arguments or research possible fraud claims.

How did this happen? How did the style of the occasional casual Friday become so far above the way that men, even men with advanced degrees, now dress for work? Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Maybe it has to do with the general coarsening of society. (But then how to explain that women in the workplace still dress nicely and appropriately by my standards?) Maybe it has to do with the observed fact that men flee from mature behavior in every way and want to imitate children, especially ghetto boyz; dressing like them is a way to feel that they have avoided responsibility.

However it happens, it's not good. When a man wears a nice suit of clothes, he feels like a grown-up. He is dressed like Gregory Peck or Clark Gable or Gary Cooper, so, naturally he'll want to behave like a grown-up. (What is that stage play in which the young man feels like his father when he wears his father's trousers? It's something like that.) When children are children, they are expected to think like children, act like children and dress like children, but when they are grown-ups, they are expected to put aside childish things, like sandals and shorts at work.

Besides, men at work in casual clothes simply lack authority. We clients really do not trust a man wearing J. Crew casual wear as much as we trust a man wearing a suit from J. Press or the venerable and much-adored Brooks Brothers. Or, to put it the way my fashion-and-image consultant pal Lisa Monet Agustsson put it, "Men who dress like children at work just don't come across as terribly smart."

In addition, if everyone is dressed for a game of dodgeball instead of a game of "let's draw up a will," how will we tell the bosses from the associates? How will we possibly feel as much confidence in a man who picks an exchange-traded fund if he appears at lunch in shorts instead of a suit?

A suit says discipline, maturity, style, respect for yourself and respect for the people you are meeting. Casual clothes say - well, the word "contempt" comes to mind, although maybe it's too harsh. Maybe just "too cool for school" is what I mean.

Take a look at a Brooks Brothers catalog. Walk around the suit floors at Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue and 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan. That is what a man at work is supposed to look like. (But a warning to Brooks Brothers: last week, I went into your store on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, looking for a lightweight suit. I was waited on by a pleasant salesman wearing casual trousers, an open-necked sport shirt and no jacket. What the heck kind of message is that for Brooks Brothers to send? "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?" So said someone much wiser than I, and Brooks Brothers had better listen up.)

OR, I can put all of this another way. This has been a dismal summer for me, for many reasons I need not bore you with. But the two high points were at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., visiting marines wounded in Iraq, and a few days later in Kansas City, Mo., speaking at the reunion of the First Marine Division - the heroes of Falluja in Iraq, the Chosin Reservoir in Korea; Peleliu, Okinawa and Guadalcanal in World War II; the I Corps tactical area in Vietnam; and many other dangerous places.

Part of the reason these events were so uplifting was that it is always uplifting to be in the presence of heroes. But another reason was that all around me were men in uniform: trim, perfectly dressed, standing straight and tall and proud with their stripes and their ribbons and their medals. They looked as if they meant business and were proud of themselves. Two of the men could still fit into their dress uniforms from Korea. They looked like kings.

There is a lesson here. Men look better if they dress for work in a uniform of a suit and a shirt and tie. They feel better about themselves, if I can judge from the moods of those marines at the hospital and at the reunion. Certainly, as a citizen, I felt better about the marines being dressed as if they honored their country and their mission. I can certainly recall that when I worked in a law firm and on Wall Street, I felt a lot better about myself and took myself and my work a lot more seriously when I dressed up like a mensch.

Maybe this is old-fashioned, but there is a lot of good sense in those old fashions.