NEW-LOOK WORKPLACES
Millennials are ditching corporate dress code
When millennials were children, back in the 1980s and 1990s, their parents wore suits to work if they had corporate or professional jobs: their fathers donned dress shirts and ties, and the padded shoulders on their mothers’ jackets made them look like fullbacks. It was the uniform of the day. As corporate formality waned and dress codes grew less constraining, terms like business casual, smart casual and business chic entered the lexicon. Then millennials came of age and, against a backdrop of Silicon Valley startups and casually clad tech entrepreneurs and engineers, many started going to work in T-shirts and running shoes. Dressing down became the new dressing up. “I think people are dressing far more casually than they did even 10 or 15 years ago — and that, among millennials, most never had to dress up,” said Caroline Alexander, co-owner of Montreal-based Ludique, a company of image consultants and wardrobe stylists. Call it a cultural shift. As Ethan Song, co-founder and CEO of Frank and Oak, a Montreal-based fashion retailer whose designs are big with millennials, said: “It’s not so much that the workplace has gotten more casual as that it has changed. Transformed. “There’s a lot of freelance, and a lot of people are working from co-working spaces,” he said. In a generation characterized by its intimacy with media and digital technologies, “industries like tech and marketing have more people in them. They are more creative professionals, and they don’t dress the same as business professionals.” Some of their workplaces, like Montreal-based architecture firm Lemay, have no dress code. The vibe during a visit this month to its bright and capacious St-Henri headquarters skewed casual, with some staffers in plaid shirts or sweatshirts, baggy jeans and running shoes, and others wearing open-necked dress shirts, sports jackets and tailored dark jeans or slacks. “It’s up to you to decide what to wear,” said Lemay architect Florence Legault, who describes her style as “always casual, but also stylish” — black pants or jeans with shirts or sweaters, sometimes sweatshirts with jeans if she’s not meeting with clients. If she is, Legault, 28, favours cropped pants with dark stockings and longsleeved tops. Like many millennials, she dresses situationally. Antony Gasnier, who is completing his stage in architecture at Lemay, might wear baggy jeans and running shoes on days he’s not seeing clients, perhaps with a jean jacket. “How I dress depends on my mood,” he said — and sometimes he’s in the mood to look more put together. The day we photographed him, he was wearing dark Diesel brand jeans and shoes, with an unstructured black blazer over a shirt featuring a subtle black and grey floral pattern.
He prefers dark colours. “If there is more sun, I might wear colours, but only solids.” For architects, “everything is in the details,” said Gasnier, 28. “We pay attention to what we wear. Even if people wear sweatshirts, they’re nice sweatshirts.” Not all millennials can wear sweatshirts to work. When Alexandra Desrochers-Vaughan, who works in community relations for Raglan Mine, a nickel mining company in Nunavik, travels to the Inuit communities of Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq for work, her attire is “more outdoorsy.” But in the company ’s Laval offices, she wears skirts and blouses and is “always a little bit dressy as opposed to dressed down.” “I don’t mind dressing up a bit. I still feel I have flexibility,” said Desrochers-Vaughan, 28. “I’m in the communications department, so there is a certain image you’re expected to project; you are representing the company.” At A2 Design, where Frédérique Lafrance works part time as a graphic designer, the men wear “nice shirts with clean jeans” and women wear wide-legged pants or jeans with jackets. Her boss “wants us to look presentable all the time, in case clients and suppliers come by,” said the UQAM marketing and communications student, “but also to be comfortable.” Lafrance, 22, used to gravitate toward “more eccentric pieces,” but has found “more of an adult style.” She likes Frank and Oak for their simple, classic bent, for how they are both professional and young and feminine. When we photographed her at the retailer’s women’s boutique in Mile End, her ensemble featured two Frank and Oak items: a forest green shortsleeved sweater and a kicky pair of short black boots. Check out any downtown office tower and you’ll still see lawyers and bankers wearing suits and ties, but less often than you once did. This month, U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs — described by the Washington Post as “one of the last bastions of crisp-collared, bespoke-suited workplace attire” — rolled out “a firm-wide flexible dress code.” And at least two of the Big Four accounting firms, considered by many to be fairly conservative, have implemented more relaxed dress codes. In 2016 PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) introduced a “dress for your day” policy. Ernst & Young Canada followed in 2017 with “jeans, the everyday option.” These corporate moves are intended to accommodate the growing proportion of millennials in the workforce, analysts say. Poised to become the largest generation in Canada as the numbers of their boomer parents decline, millennials already make up the biggest proportion of the labour force — nearly 40 per cent. “I think that because the workplace has changed, employers are trying to give employees more options to make things more likable, to be more competitive,” said speaker and author Mitch Joel, co-founder of Six Pixels Group, an advisory, investing and content-producing company focused on technology, commerce and innovation. Being able “to wear jeans every day is a real differentiator for my generation,” said Maxime Laliberté, a chartered professional accountant at EY Canada Assurance Services. And not his generation alone: Laliberté, 25, said he has noticed senior staff, accustomed to a more corporate dress code, wearing jeans. With the new guidelines, “people are able to express themselves through what they wear,” said Santino Gurreri, 36, a senior manager at PwC. “We are a culture and we celebrate it.” “It is less being told, ‘This is what you need to wear’ and more about letting you be yourself,” said Lisa Brestansky, a fellow senior manager at PwC. “When staff are able to come to work and be authentic, who they truly are, they come to work being their best — and that promotes motivation and innovation so we are providing the best service to our clients.” Brestansky, 32, makes her wardrobe decisions based on her calendar: jeans and a blouse if she isn’t seeing clients; if she is, she matches her attire to the way the client dresses. “If the client is more casual, I will dress accordingly.”
For a meeting with a conservative client, she would wear a suit, but pair it with heels. “I feel very comfortable in four-inch stilettos,” she said. “I find that young people care a lot more today about comfort and function,” said Song of Frank and Oak. “They want things that breathe, they want things that stretch and that are easy to maintain.” “I can’t think in tight clothes,” said Alexis Caron-Côté, a copywriter at the Sid Lee creative services firm. Melanie May Taillon, office co-ordinator and marketing person at Malicis Informatique, observed: “If I’m going to be uncomfortable and distracted because of my clothes, I don’t think I am going to be at my most productive.” Taillon, 28, dresses to reflect her personality. The day we photographed her in her employer’s glass-walled office in the WeWork co-working space at Place Ville Marie, she had on black overalls over a grey turtleneck sweater and tall Doc Martens. With 2,700 members in Montreal, WeWork has another location across from the Bell Centre. In place in more than 30 countries, the company’s concept appeals to everyone from freelancers to large corporations that want a less corporate atmosphere. “I like the open concept, how we can see our neighbours,” Taillon said. “I like how there are always people walking by.” Millennials also want functional clothes that take them beyond their workday. “A lot of our customers go from the office to meetings to happy hour — and they want to do it wearing the same thing,” Song said. “If I have in-studio recording in the morning, a movie launch and a presentation in the afternoon and I go out for a drink after work, I want to be comfortable and look good,”
Young people care a lot more today about comfort and function. They want things that breathe, they want things that stretch.
said Caron-Côté, 31, in Sid Lee’s temporary digs on the 21st floor of 1 Place Ville Marie — cleverly designed to evoke the river and mountains of a camp environment. (A permanent Sid Lee campus on the lobby and mezzanine levels is being built.) “There is a lot of style and range” in what people wear at Sid Lee, Caron-Côté said. Those in business development dress more formally; for the creative department, “the dress style is loose and fun and mostly comfortable,” he said. “I pay attention to what I wear, and I tend to look for timeless things.” The day he was photographed by the Montreal Gazette, Caron-Côté had on sneakers, black jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt under a burnt-orange overshirt — both from Frank and Oak, as were his brightly coloured socks. He had two client presentations that day. Sasha Morielli, a technical recruiter with LeverageTek IT Solutions, had two client meetings the day we photographed him at the Place Ville Marie WeWork space. He was dressed in a black suit with a collarless white shirt, untucked. The pants were rolled so his ankles were visible, and he had on shiny black oxfords and no socks. On days he isn’t seeing clients, Morielli, 29, opts for “clean jeans, running shoes and a comfortable sweater.” Like many other millennials, he has worked from home, and says he prefers the social and community aspect of his co-working space and that it makes him more productive. “Being home means not dressing for work, and I don’t have the same posture wearing jogging pants as dress pants. It’s more self-imposed than anything, but it feels like I get more work done in a week if I dress in more ‘proper’ clothes,” he said. “To me, you feel the way you dress.”