Working a Sharper Look

Dressing better—maybe less formally—is in the forecast for southwest Missouri workplaces as the image-conscious children of the Boomers take their place in the economy.

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Every time the economy takes a dip or the Fed chairman starts throwing around words like “uncertainty,” in the nation’s business forecast, the chorus from the national lifestyle media begins: “It’s time to get serious at work. You can’t afford not to be. Casual Fridays are out. Half-Windsor knots are in.” That took place this past year, as the housing boom cooled and gas prices heated up.

In southwest Missouri, the picture is more nuanced. For now, business casual reigns in our local outposts of corporate America. “Not dressy, but not sloppy,” is how Laura Engel describes the prevailing fashion winds at the headquarters of her company, O’Reilly Auto Parts. Engel works in the Springfield headquarters as a claims representative; her desk is part of a classical corporate cube farm. Even so, the dress code she describes is more about Midwestern simplicity than a corporate obsession with propriety that you might find in, say, St. Louis: “On a regular day, I wear a nice pair of slacks or khakis and a blouse, or a jacket or sweater and a blouse,” Engel says. “I’ve worked in places that required you to wear three pieces. It couldn’t be a shirt-and-skirt, it had to be a jacket, shirt and skirt. It was really kind of a drag. There’s no requirement like that here.” On dress-down Fridays, Engel wears jeans and comfortable sweaters. Everyone at O’Reilly shares the same aesthetic: Even the vice-presidents wear O’Reilly logo shirts or polos with khakis. (Nobody, however, would try tank tops or flip-flops.) “You couldn’t tell vice-presidents from us,” Engel adds. The family atmosphere of the company sets the dress code.

That feel of Midwestern informality doesn’t extend to locals who work in finance, law or medicine—where southwest Missourians are very well-dressed, if not so brand-obsessed as their urban counterparts. Yet if what you sell is creativity, dressing too formally ruins your company’s brand. “A tie would kill me,” says Noel Green. Along with his wife, Celeste, Green owns Park East Inc., a Springfield-based company specializing in Flash web design (that’s the fancy kind) for a diverse client list that has included Springfield artist Susan Somer-Luarca and the Arizona-based law firm Ekmark & Ekmark. The Greens work from home but also have plenty of outside client meetings, and they usually match each other’s dress and accessories to some degree (down to nearly identical black Moleskine notebooks), wearing a lot of high-end-but-informal looks from stores such as Express. “If I showed up in a suit, they might ask, ‘Are you the driver? Where’s Mr. Green?’” Noel jokes. Same goes for Celeste. “I would never wear a dress,” she says (though dresses have been uncommon in the workplace for the past several years; see sidebar at right). “A skirt, maybe, in summer, if I needed to be dressy—but with sandals,” she says. If pressed, the Greens cite the importance of communicating a brand image. It’s akin to the difference between the slightly hipsterish Mac guy and the brown-suit-wearing PC guy on those TV commercials. “Atmosphere is important, even at home,” Celeste says, and they plan their atmosphere down to what’s playing when they set their iPod on shuffle while they work from their home office.

We’ll be seeing brand image drive workplace fashion even more in the years to come, says Dr. Michele Granger. As the head of the applied consumer sciences department at Missouri State University, Dr. Granger serves as the region’s fashion gatekeeper. “It’s almost easier to say what not to wear,” she remarks: Anything too baggy, too sexy, too casual or too sloppy. Vintage is good; old and wrinkly, not so much. Dr. Granger points to the vibe she’s getting from her industry contacts: Beginning in 2008–2009, a more dressy look is coming, not just nationwide, but also in southwest Missouri. “There’s a big Millennium-ers group coming up, a huge consumer pocket,” she says. Dr. Granger says these children of the Baby Boomers spend something like $46 billion per year on garments, and they dress situationally: one look for school, another for going out, another for the office. “Even here—not as much as in other places—I am seeing this,” she says. She points to college business fraternities who have taken to requiring full professional attire at meetings. As these image-conscious young adults enter the workforce and replace Boomers who embrace a casual look that goes with working less and enjoying accumulated wealth, the atmosphere of workplaces as a whole will be dressier in the years to come. Perhaps it’s time to put on a nice jacket over that logo-polo.

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