dress code

This is the best kind of dress code. At least very long blurbs of it.

"Several people have asked questions about the dress code. The questions include: "Is it okay for everyone to wear sandals now?" "Can everyone wear shorts?" "Isn't it inappropriate to wear provocative clothing to work?" "Are the coaches going to enforce the dress code, or not?" Let's deal with the last question first. The old dress code included a sentence that says "if you have questions, ask your department manager." That'll give you a clue about how old it is. The old dress code did specifically say "no shorts." It didn't talk about footwear or provocative attire, but all of us old-timers know that sandals and come-hither clothing were sore subjects several years ago...

Frankly, we're not interested in working at a place with a long list of rules about how low blouses can be cut, how short skirts can be cut, and how unevenly toenails can be cut. We hope you aren't, either. But that doesn't mean that absolutely anything goes. Our goal is to sell great work to our clients. Which means they have to trust our judgment. So if you give the client a reason to focus on what you're wearing instead of what we're selling, that isn't bad fashion. It's bad judgment. It's giving the client an excuse to reject the right creative solution for the wrong reason. It's potentially holding us back from our goal. And if making a personal fashion statement is more important to you than great advertising, then you're working at the wrong place.

So instead of making the old dress code longer and more specific, we'd rather reduce it to one short sentence: "Dress appropriately for the client and the occasion." Exercise good judgment. If you're meeting with clients, dress appropriately for the type of client and the situation...

If your clothing gives the client a reason to comment on the way you're dressed, then it's probably inappropriate, and it's definitely diverting their attention from the work. We're all adults. We're all professionals. And we're all smart enough to know that our priority is great work. Not just creating it, but getting the client to buy it. So we're going to trust you to make the right decision on what you wear and what you don't...

If that absolutely doesn't work, then we'll create a dress code that gets very specific and forbids black lace corsets and leather codpieces. But frankly, we'd rather be duct-taped to a metal folding chair and forced to watch a retrospective of Geraldo Rivera's TV career."