When my friend Steve Cooper moved from England to Silicon Valley in 1999, he happily left all his suits and ties on the other side of the Atlantic, and like a true Californian, he wore a polo shirt, shorts, and sandals every day. No need to change clothes for business meetings. He thought he could live happily like this for the rest of his life, until one day he walked into the boardroom of a big-name venture capital company and found that the room was full of people in suits and ties, including two partners who were usually very casual, and he was the only one. Wearing a polo shirt, khaki shorts and sandals.
My personal feeling is that most Chinese people would rather dress more casually than others, because we want to be low-key and don’t want to be labeled as a pushy person. People who work in domestic and foreign companies and securities companies may dress more formally due to company requirements, but most of the leaders and senior executives of state-owned enterprises, private companies and government agencies I have contacted do not seem to like suits and ties all the time. In some social occasions, even if the formal dress code is stated, many people will still come dressed casually. A friend of mine attended the China Europe International Management School Alumni Association in Beijing more than two years ago. The invitation said men’s suits and women’s dresses. She wore an evening dress in the middle of the winter, but found that most of the people were Wearing jeans and casual clothes
Many people have experienced similar embarrassing scenes, including me. No matter which country you are in, how to dress in the office can be a headache. We all have countless opportunities to meet people, from job interviews to visiting clients, and the importance of impressions needs no more mention. Even in the office every day, personal appearance cannot be neglected. No matter how hard you work and dress sloppily every day, your boss may not be willing to take you to meet clients or promote you to management.
On the surface, Americans may appear to dress casually, but the situation sometimes becomes complicated. Colleagues who are usually very casual will suddenly dress up in an extremely formal manner, leaving foreigners like Steve and me at a loss. How can we avoid embarrassing situations in the United States?
I asked two office etiquette experts, Gretchen Neels and Ann Marie Sabath, what their top tips are for professional attire, and they both had exactly the same answer: “Don’t dress for the job you’re doing, dress for the job you want to do. Dress.” That is, if you want to be promoted, look at how your boss and the boss dress.
These two experts believe that the “business casual” dress style that emerged from Silicon Valley in the 1970s and 1980s is to blame for the confusion between work attire and casual attire in American companies. Everyone should remember that Bill Gates wore a popular pullover sweater to release Microsoft’s new software, and Yahoo’s Jerry Yang wore an ordinary plaid shirt to give a demonstration. Both men now wear suits (although they still rarely wear ties), but Apple’s Steve Jobs still wears a black turtleneck and jeans as he has for decades
Although I won’t wear yoga pants to the office, I have always believed that “business casual” is the second best invention after the flush toilet, so I have encountered several embarrassing situations.
In the past decade or so, this “business leisure” trend has become increasingly popular. In many companies, khaki pants and jeans are no longer reserved for “casual Fridays” and can be worn anytime. There are very few companies that stipulate that all employees must wear suits every day. Even law firms and some Wall Street companies allow employees to wear casual clothes when they are not in court or meeting clients. A friend who works at a major Wall Street investment bank said his company allows jeans to be worn one day every two weeks.
The problem is that many young Americans think that leisure means that they can wear their college clothes to work. My colleague “Style” columnist Christina Binkley wrote an article about how young assistants in law firms now only wear suits when going to court. They usually wear everything from yoga pants to UGG snow boots. . This makes their seniors (who are also their bosses) who grew up wearing suits very displeased. Some companies believe that young people’s casual attire lacks basic respect for work and have begun to try to reverse this trend by specifying what can and cannot be worn.
I have only bought one suit in my life. I bought it for an interview at the Wall Street Journal. I wore the pants once or twice, but I never touched the top again after working. From Monday to Thursday, especially when meeting interview subjects, I will pay more attention to wearing a decent woolen cardigan and skirt. But Friday is my jeans day. One Friday, I suddenly received a notice that Intel President Otellini was coming to the newspaper office to hold an editorial meeting in the afternoon. It was the kind of Q&A meeting where reporters and editors from the editor-in-chief to covering an industry gather in a square shape to face each other. I was wearing a pair of three-quarter jeans that day. The pants not only had pockets but also holes. The overall dress code in our newspaper office tends to be “business casual,” but since it is an economic media, it will not be too casual. I felt a bit like a mess that day, and I felt very unprofessional as I sat there.
In fact, even some old-school restaurants and clubs in New York do not accept my own definition of “business casual” style. Some places require men toBlazers are required, and jeans and sneakers are not allowed. One Friday last summer, a friend and I decided to head to the famous Campbell Apartments Cocktail Bar at Manhattan Grand Central Station. When I got to the door, I was blocked because I was wearing a pair of sneakers (it was raining that day). Later, I checked the bar’s website and it actually said “Wearing baseball caps, T-shirts and sneakers will not be accepted.” A few weeks ago, a friend and I met at the Yale Club. The day before, she specially wrote an email to remind me: “Don’t wear jeans!”
If you want to make fewer mistakes in this area, you have to rely on friends to remind you, or observe by yourself and take the initiative to inquire. The problem is that some people don’t even know what they are doing is wrong, and it’s hard for others to tell them. Office etiquette experts Ms. Neels and Ms. Sabath are often hired by large companies to talk to foreign employees about how to better integrate into American corporate culture. In fact, they often speak as a third party what the HR manager cannot say. They often need to teach foreign employees about American hygiene habits: showering, shaving, and changing shirts every day.
Don’t think that everyone understands this. A Chinese friend who works for a financial information company in New Jersey told me that last fall there was a new Chinese colleague in the office. He was gentle and polite, but he wore a brick-red pullover sweater and jacket every day for three months. A pair of brown corduroy pants doesn’t look sloppy, but it’s very different from the habit of changing clothes every day in American companies. A Chinese colleague couldn’t help but reminded him tactfully, and it worked immediately. He changed into a light-colored sweater and khaki pants the next day, but he wore this outfit for three months.
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