Comments on: Today’s Faux Pas

By: Brainstorming About The Future | Cosmic Variance

Brainstorming About The Future | Cosmic Variance — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:38:39 +0000

[...] It is all about the role of the academic blogger, etc. They invited me along, and it is being held in the neighbourhood (Annenberg Center for Communication…yes, I found it this time)..it looked interesting, so why not go? So I am here. I’ll tell you more as time permits. [...]

By: citrine

citrine — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:49:59 +0000

I’m in a strange situation where my preferred style of dressing would give off a misguided impression (that I’m in Econ, Business, Elementary Ed or a similar non – tech field). Finding the proper balance between my aesthetic preferences and maintaining some sort of professionally appropriate (?) image just adds another dimension of complexity to my world. To give a specific example, I may wear a solid jacket over a long dress in Summer. Now that it’s getting colder everyone wears jeans and sweaters. Luckily, I don’t seem to lose credibility points with my colleagues based on sartorial choices. When it comes to professional events I stay away from donning anything with floral patterns.

By: Helge

Helge — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:59:32 +0000

I would go for being underdressed, but I am still young … So I didn’t have to do anything very official yet.
The most official thing I did, was the presentation of the project I did during this summer, an that I did in bright pink. But everybody was very causially dressed there. So I didn’t really feel uncomfortable in it.
I think you need to like what you wear. That is most important. If you don’t like wearing a tie, don’t do it! (I would never do it!!!, except forced to.)
Helge

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 06:11:22 +0000

Hmmmm…..I find that I have never won a tie for special meetings. In fact, 90% of the time I’m in bluejeans. I did notice during our faculty meeting today that I was the only one in bluejeans. Our current lab director, Jonathan Dorfan, wore bluejeans everyday until he became director. Now he’s in khakis, white shirt, and sweater if it is chilly outside. Nice clothes do give a first impression, but do not substitute for substance.

By: djhroseville

djhroseville — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 05:19:41 +0000

I say wear something a little crazy any chance you can when you have a captive audience, they’ll remeber you.

By: Kaleberg

Kaleberg — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 04:05:49 +0000

I go for overdressing. It saves work. When you are massively superlazy, it pays to put on a jacket and tie, or a dinner jacket, or if it is an international crowd, striped pants. Yes, it takes work to haul the thing out of the closet and put it on, but it pays off with unearned credence and respect. (As a man, I may think I have it bad, but dressing up is even more of a pain for women, especially if they try and make it look easy. Casual means sweat blood).

As noted by others. You can always take off your jacket and tie.

Why does it work? It’s applied anthropology. Clothing is a major status indicator dating from way when. People expect their leaders, their shamans, their healers, their bumpkins, their enforcers to dress a certain way. The clothes vary from culture to culture, but the automatic reaction is real and deeply ingrained.

As an engineer, I originally considered dressing up to be rather silly. Aside from an occasional grounding strap, or rubber soled shoes, the non-people side of the job rarely imposed any serious dress requirements. As for the people side of the job, I learned that it often saved a lot of time and recriminations if I overdressed. A good suit can cost as much as a new Powerbook, but it can be worth every penny. Think of it as one of the tools of the trade, just like those O’Reilly guides or a copy of Mathematica.

Since a lot of readers of this web site are physicists, it might be interesting to consider what a proper physicist should wear, or rather, what people expect a physicist to wear. Charles Dickens picked up and developed one scientific archetype with his soft edged Boffin. Albert Einstein brought Boffin to life. His barber goes unsung. The Manhattan Project gang was rather dapper, what with all those European refugees. What is the archetype today? If Tom Tierney were commissioned to produce a book of paper dolls of modern scientists, what clothes would they wear (or more properly, have crimped on)?

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 03:40:38 +0000

I don’t know about Clifford, but I wear so much black that I asked for a white board in my office when I came to Syracuse.

By: citrine

citrine — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 03:29:19 +0000

You forgot to mention a very important factor that enters into a Theorist’s sartorial choices. With your propensity to write on blackboards which suit is most compatible with chalk (or magic marker)dust? Are most boards you write on, black or white? Remember this IS a black or white question.

By: Dissident

Dissident — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 01:20:43 +0000

OK, time to do my dissenting duty: being overdressed is worse. Makes you look clueless AND insecure, like somebody desperate to fit in. Underdressed conveys the opposite message: “who cares, I don’t need to put on a show for you people, I’m secure in my bare skin even (and it’s a beautiful skin, of course; wanna see?)”.

As an aside, it’s great to see somebody on this purportedly leftist blog praising the superiority of a private provider of services (in the case at hand, higher education) which has to act on the market’s terms (make your customers happy or they’ll take their money elsewhere) over socialized ones (which can treat the customers, i.e. the students, as they damn please since the money is dragged out of the tax payer’s pockets whether they agree or not). An applause to you, Clifford!

Now please do not offer public evisceration to Mark, Sean et.al. for this faux pas too. They just might take you up on it.

By: spyder

spyder — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 01:02:06 +0000

Clifford, you are in LA and at the home of one of the world’s most productive multi-media training grounds. The standards and protocols of dress, from “black tie and tails” formal to “business” formal to “professional attire” and so forth are almost too well documented in that town. The multiplicity of the red carpet treatment of celebrity by their very own hypocritically damned fashion police is shown day and night on no less than 12 cable channels. This allows you a degree of freedom of form and function in attire that you don’t really have in too many other cities in the world (a black t-shirt worn w/ a $6000 tux is considered tres chic afterall). In LA it isn’t about overdressing as much as it is about the labels on those threads. I suspect that several of those finely dressed trustees in that meeting were well attuned to the creators of their fashions as well as those of the others.