Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Axing formal clothes puts women at a disadvantage
GOLDMAN Sachs are relaxing their famously rigid dress code to allow staff to wear less formal clothes to work.
This might sound like good news but in reality it’s a recipe for confusion – and risks putting women, in particular, at a disadvantage.
For a start, what on earth does less formal mean? Is it really about simply ditching the tie or could men break out their old Guns N’ Roses T-shirts to lockdown the P&L? Can women bankers, long kitted out as mini-me males, now seal the deal in floral tea dresses and trainers?
While in theory it’s liberating to dress how you wish, one of the things I learnt during my Vogue years was that most people actually like to be told what to wear. It makes them feel safer and limits the possibility of getting it all badly wrong. Even the most apparently confident of people fear pitching up in something that makes them look like they didn’t receive the memo. ‘Just wear what you like’ is guaranteed to put people into a flap.
And nowhere is this more true than in office culture. I still remember persuading a boyfriend of mine, who was about to join The Times, that he should buy a green tweed suit for his new job.
He actually wept when he came home from his first day, having discovered he looked like the Jolly Green Giant in a sea of newsroom grey.
Freedom from formality is especially tricky for women who have relied upon certain ways of presenting themselves to indicate their status and competence. After decades of striving for equality in the work place by adopting the uniformity of men’s clothes – suits, tailoring, monochrome colours – there is evidence that women worry
that they will be taken less seriously if they dress down.
In the words of a woman quoted in a Business Of Fashion article on the subject: ‘We’ve just achieved the parity of the pantsuit and suddenly we’re told the pantsuit is no longer standard workforce attire.’
The truth is that, in the work place, clothes are a status symbol and smart dress is still a way of showing how high up the pecking order you’ve climbed. Most people don’t want their hard-won professional success to go incognito.
What, you might argue, is the point of all that effort if it becomes the norm to turn up in jeans and a hoodie and dress the same as the intern?
Men, whose clothing options are narrower, seem to be happy to sit around a boardroom table in the same chinos and button downs as their juniors. But for women, many of whom still bat up against sexist judgments on their appearance, it’s much trickier to just ditch the accepted norms and figure out for themselves what works at work.
Politicians in shorts is such a bad look
PERHAPS it’s an occupational hazard, or maybe it’s deliberate positioning to show you won’t die on the job, but whatever the reason, photographs of our political elite in exercise gear is never a good look. While there have been fewer sightings of the greater spotted Boris huffing and puffing around in his beanie and joggers (possibly he now has more interesting activity to occupy his early mornings), Michael Gove is rarely out of his shorts and ankle socks and Corbyn has shown a fondness for a very peculiar metallic trackie while taking up an allegedly brutal fitness regime. I guess it’s a male thing, but my words to the wise are: make like the women in Parliament and keep your workouts to yourself.
A timely reminder of a troubled genius
TATE Britain’s Van Gogh exhibition is already the best-selling show in their history. Not only can you see masterpieces like Starry Night and Sunflowers but the show highlights how his life-enhancingly gorgeous use of colour and appreciation of nature was in continual negotiation with the darkness of his state of mind. At a time when issues around mental health are forefront, the Tate show highlights this aspect of the artist’s life and work.
It’s even selling Van Gogh’s Words of Wisdom – a box of cards perfectly positioned for inspirational Instagram posts.
What’s so tempting about a Pinch of Nom?
KUDOS to the authors of Pinch Of Nom, a diet book that’s the fastest-selling non-fiction title since records began, shifting over 210,000 copies in its first three days. But its popularity is baffling. While the recipes sound delicious and authors Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone lost 12 stone between them, I am sure they would agree that they are still on the hefty side.
It’s wildly tempting to think a diet book that contains Enchilada Lasagna and Bakewell Tart is the miracle we have all been waiting for, but a glance at the author photographs shows that nirvana is still some distance away.
16 interviews for one job is multi-madness
A FRIEND told me that she had 16 interviews for her new job. What a box-ticking waste of time. Multiinterviews are the current trend in employment but surely it’s obvious, as shown by the whole nightmarish Brexit stalemate, that the more people you ask, the less clear the answer will ever be.
Secret tips from a very glamorous gran
BEAUTIFUL Yasmin Le Bon, who’s 54, has become the patron saint of glamorous grannies with her mini skirts and catwalk appearances. But she’s been rehearsing this role for years. I remember Yasmin, below, telling me at least a decade ago that she had deliberately begun to sit down to put on her tights so that nobody would notice when she reached the time when her balance was not all it used to be and she could no longer manage that unavoidable moment of standing on one leg.
Toilet paper is NOT optional, Monsieur!
BOOKING into a French hotel online I was amazed to see that, along with the usual inducements of free wi-fi, air con, and flatscreen TV, was toilet paper. I know that a reliable supply of toilet paper is under threat in a No Deal Brexit, but I didn’t know that the French, stalwart members of the EU, already regard it as an optional extra.