I've just got back from lunch in the square mile, with a couple of friends. I'd forgotten people actually still wear suits and even more weird ties. I wear a suit maybe a couple of times a month for new business meetings but the last tie I bought is about 6 years old. My client meetings tend to be smart casual, by which I mean I wear a lot of black. Well I'm in advertising that's what we do darling. Actually I'm not in advertising, but it's what I do darling. The rest of the time I wear t-shirts and jeans
My office is 2 minutes from Tate Modern and normally people in ties round these parts get poked with sticks and pointed at. Unless of course it's some sort of eccentric cravatt, in which case they get asked their opinion about Mark Rothko.
However, cross the Millennium Bridge and you wade into a sea of suits and ties. It's quite extraordinary and strangely bizarre. I used to have a few finance clients, but it's been years since I've worked in the sector and I'd forgotten how it was. I basically now have gaming and software clients and on the whole those guys work in offices where you're lucky if the personnel have washed their clothes, let alone wear a tie.
One thing did strike me though, having been out of the suit and tie game for a wee while. I've fallen behind on what people are wearing these days. It would appear that the main fashion sweeping the city is shirts and ties that should never ever be in the same room together, let alone worn by the same high flying, pond-hopping finance exec. I'm sorry, but wearing a white and blue striped shirt with a gold and black striped tie, looks shit. Please don't try and persuade me that it's fashionable, because I know that at the weekend you climb into a wardrobe that was all bought at Boden and the Salcombe Clothing Company by your long suffering wife and you rebuy brown leather boat shoes every 4 or 5 years, because your previous pair has a hole in them.
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3 comments:
Yes well...[shakes head at the horror of it all] Do you mean to tell me that you don't shop for your shirts in Jermyn Street?
Turnbull & Asser or Pink's, either will do.
Whatever next? You'll be blackballed at the club old bean.
More then 25 years ago I worked in an office where on the last Friday in the month you had to wear a shirt and tie that clashed and the women had to wear the most bizarre combinations they could find - yellow blouse/purple skirt etc.
Even though I'm an accountant I do find trips to the City slightly intimidating with all those Tristrams dressed like extras from Are You Being Served?
I imagine you as a younger version of Ralph Lauren Six (minus the white hair) and am very disturbed to hear that my image is all wrong. Only joking ... it's just that your business must be full of scarily trendy types.
At the college where I work it's a case of 'anything goes'. Not many of the men wear suits. Dave (BF) is a sports lecturer here and wears shorts/tracksuit bums, tee-shirts and trainers all year long. Oh and the obligitary (sp?) whistle around his neck of course.
I used to work for M&S at their Head Office and would never, ever, ever work for the private sector again as a result. If only for the fact that I couldn't do the power dressing.
I daren't say what I'm wearing today because of David reads this he'll tell me it's so last year darling!
Ros (aka PPG)
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