Do clothes make the man?;

              Are clothes just the pieces of cloth a
man puts on to protect himself from
the elements and to uphold the conven­tions
of modesty? This is only partly
true. Aside from the desire to appear
pleasing, a man dresses in accord with
an image. This is a barely articulated,
subliminal sense of what is appropriate
to his station in life. Invariably, it re­flects
a man's occupation.
Businessmen and accountants have
traditionally been very conservative as
far as their appearance is concerned,
preferring a certain conformity that yet
would say to the world, "I am a busi­nessman"
or "I am a professional." The
rationale was—and remains—that the
only thing assertive about a man should
be his talent and personality and the
goods or services that he offers his cus­tomers
or clients, not his appearance.
Dr. J. Peter McNerney, an industrial
psychologist who has been a consultant
for Haskins & Sells, explains this
concept.
"I think the greatest stress on dress
in industry was developed by organi­zations
that were trying to sell pro­fessional
services—banks, management
consultants and accountants," he says.
"A good many years ago we decided
that an image would really help our
services."
Service "salesmen" have nothing else
to offer their customers but their own
expertise; there is no tangible merchan­dise
to offer like new cars, a line of
dresses, a brand of soup. Instead the
service professions, bereft of a show­room
or display case as tangible ev-
24 idence of their labor, work largely with­in
the confines of another occupation.
To escape this sort of overshadow­ing,
the reasoning ran, it would be
necessary for the accountant and the
consultant (among other service pro­fessionals)
to compensate by adhering
to a certain stamp, a controlled presen­tation
of himself that would be rec­ognized
as substance, as moderation,
as continuity. As far as appearance is
concerned, this concept resulted in a
sort of uniform: subtle colors, subtle
patterns, subtle cuts; a quiet coordina­tion
that resulted in a homogeneity
among all people in the business and
service professional world. McNerney
cited the well-known "IBM image" of
dark suits and white shirts as a prime
example of a calculated professional
image via appearance. Computer sales­men
do not sell just complicated elec­tronic
machinery but also a whole
concept of service to the customer. The
psychology of their quiet, conservative
clothing was to prove they could un­obtrusively
fit in with the bosses and
employees of a business in all phases
of its operation. McNerney quoted a
vice president of Arthur D. Little, a
prominent consulting firm, who put it
this way: "We like PhDs on our staff—
as long as they're properly packaged."
Within the past decade, however,
and especially within the past five
years, this idea that appearance should
be as understated as possible has run
headon into a new concept: man as a
fashion plate suddenly coddled by de­signers
as well as tailors; man as the
peacock and, in its more extreme form,
as the faddist. Suddenly men's fashions
are news and the options for not being
a lookalike virtually endless. Fewer
white shirts are being purchased; hats
have virtually disappeared; ties are
wild and wide; suits come in a range
of cuts as well as patterns; sideburns
are definitely "in" and barbers are no
longer asked to "clip it close around
the ears."
Initially, the business community re­sisted
these blandishments to vanity.
But recently such frills as wide-lapeled
Edwardian suits and even muttonchop
sideburns are appearing in the execu­tive
offices of companies that were