Dressing the Man or Dressing Like Him?

As you may have guessed (from this, this, and this), I wear a tie most days, regardless of occasion. Now, some people might ask, as one friend recently did, "Why do you want to dress like the man?" ("the man" being used here in the 1969 sense of the term). Why not, the logic might go, just wear "whatever" during the day and put on something special when going out? Since I think this is a fair question, I thought I'd address it here.

For me, "the man" shouldn't be the only one who gets to dress respectably on a daily basis. If we avoid wearing something simply because "the man" wears it (a development he may even welcome), he is just as instrumental in determining our attire as he would be if we flocked to wearing it in imitation.

Furthermore, our age of any-garment-goes makes our decision to dress especially independent. Far from "dressing like the man," wearing a tie and so on every day in the current climate, where it's not required (or even preferred), demonstrates agency; we dress because we want to.

In contrast, when we just wear "whatever" most of the time, putting on "something special" for swanky social functions, we indicate that, on certain occasions, we don't wear what we really want but allow others (usually "the man") to dictate an apparel we wouldn't normally don.

Or so it seems to me. What do other people think?

Work Clothes

I really like wearing ties. This is not a secret; I've said it here. I love the way they look, I love what they stand for, I love the way the stiff material guides my neck into proper posture.

My problem, however, is that the place I work gets me very grungy and thus necessitates wearing "work clothes" -- and here I don't primarily mean the apparel one wears on the job (at some point, I hope to do a post about "work clothes" in this more narrowly-defined sense as well) but, more generally, the apparel one wears for any endeavor bound to sully up raiment: changing the oil in the car, mowing the lawn, and so forth.

Since my job obliges wearing this type of clothing, I've been spending a lot of my existence in uninspiring attire. And while part of me would love to change into nicer clothes when I get home from my job, the other part militates against putting on a shirt and tie for dinner, etc., only to take them right off again to go bed.

What to do? Well, recently, I decided to incorporate a tie into my work clothes outfit. This would allow me the joy of daily wearing ties without having to change into them for that express purpose. I selected a few ties that are high enough in quality to be appealing yet are mildly deficient in some way that disqualifies them from my normal tie rotation: e.g., they're a bit too long or short, perhaps lightly stained, and neither decorative nor versatile.

Of course, wearing a tie requires a somewhat nicer shirt, which might call for better pants. Since I have some pretty good bleach-splashed or red soda-speckled shirts and trousers, I went for the full work clothes makeover.

Wearing this new garb got me thinking. Why do we throw away nice but stained clothes while hanging on to cheap, baggy jeans and freebee tees to wear for yard work? We wouldn't be caught dead in this stuff under normal circumstances, but somehow it's good enough when we're working? Wouldn't we rather wear that shirt that makes us feel like a million bucks when it invariably has something go wrong with it? I understand we might not want to wear hot, constricting clothes for strenuous activity, but a lot of nice clothes are not hot or constricting (hey, yank that tie down a little!) and a lot of work is not strenuous. In these cases, wouldn't the work be more enjoyable if we conducted it in an outfit we liked?

Of Neckties and Constancy

The international website for Andrew's Ties, who, incidentally, make a decent necktie for the price, has an aphorism I think many readers of this blog would appreciate:

Tell any man you like his tie and you will see his personality open like a flower.

The important point here, at least for me, is not that such a compliment bolsters a man's confidence in how he looks. Rather, the point is this: Wearing a tie in this day and age, especially when it's voluntary, is fairly uncommon. If a man does it, he shows that he cares about what he puts on, as opposed to sliding into whatever is merely inexpensive, sufficiently modest, and not unduly confining. If a man feels greater attention in this matter is also valuable to others, it will continue to be valuable to him.

Of course, all this is true for the rest of his clothes as well, but the tie, at least as I see it, is a symbol. When I was growing up, no matter what kind of upheaval visited my dad's life, he always got up, put on a tie, and went to work. If he was unemployed, he did the same thing to go out and look for jobs. Because of this, the weekend t-shirt was special. He had accepted his responsibility every day and the end of the week meant there wasn't any left. He was free to relax and his attire expressed that. When I put on a tie, I feel myself joining my dad and a chorus of other men who have put aside their laziness or fear about the chaos life often brings and accepted the task before them. When someone appreciates that I'm wearing a tie, they're appreciating this decision.