Buttoned Up: Clothing, Conformity, and White-Collar Masculinity

by Erynn Masi De Casanova

Who is today's white-collar man? The world of work has changed radically since The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and other mid-twentieth-century investigations of corporate life and identity. Contemporary jobs are more precarious, casual Friday has become an institution, and telecommuting blurs the divide between workplace and home. Gender expectations have changed, too, with men's bodies increasingly exposed in the media and scrutinized in everyday interactions. In Buttoned Up, based on interviews with dozens of men in three U.S. cities with distinct local dress cultures—New York, San Francisco, and Cincinnati—Erynn Masi de Casanova asks what it means to wear the white collar now.

Despite the expansion of men’s fashion and grooming practices, the decrease in formal dress codes, and the relaxing of traditional ideas about masculinity, white-collar men feel constrained in their choices about how to embody professionalism. They strategically embrace conformity in clothing as a way of maintaining their gender and class privilege. Across categories of race, sexual orientation and occupation, men talk about "blending in" and "looking the part" as they aim to keep their jobs or pursue better ones. These white-collar workers’ accounts show that greater freedom in work dress codes can, ironically, increase men’s anxiety about getting it wrong and discourage them from experimenting with their dress and appearance.

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2015

Reviews

[Killian · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this was definitely an interesting concept, I really didn't feel like I learned much from this book. I feel like most people who have given any minor thought to how they dress has figured out that you dress to adapt to your environment, and even more so in the "business" world. White-collar jobs being the most ubiquitous of those, with the more recent exception of IT jobs which seem to prize super casual dress.

For the most part Buttoned Up relies on snippets from interviews to tease apart the meaning of "dress" and "uniform" in the white-collar, male business world. The phenomenon of "business casual" is explored and both heartily embraced and scorned depending on who Casanova is speaking to. The idea of the traditional "gray wool suit" is dissected.

The most interesting parts to me involved the idea of conformity and how it influences how one dresses, especially in a business environment. This isn't a new concept or anything, but Casanova touches on the idea of how our parents and community influence how we dress when we are young, and how those implications can play out in later years which was fascinating.

I would love to read a entire book about the idea of race and business dress too. Casanova briefly mentions two of her black interviewees expressing how much more they feel they have to conform to formal dress than others. If she is planning on following up on more of this research, that would be a really interesting direction to move toward, and the implications could be huge considering the vast majority of white-collar business leaders (CEO's, etc) are not minority (race, sex, etc).

So yeah, no new ideas here but it was an interesting musing on white-collar dress behaviors and the sociology behind them.

Copy courtesy of Cornell University Press, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

[Gio · Rating 3 out of 5]

De Casanova explores how men workwear has changed in recent years. Is business casual spelling the end of the power suit or do men still feel the need to don one to advance in their careers?

De Casanova interviews men in three different cities (New York, San Francisco and Cincinnati) to understand what influences their dress choices at work. Topics include the evolution of business casual, gender expectation, and the relationship between race and business dress. These are all topics that are very fascinating and deserving of their own books.

The problem is that De Casanova tackled them by mainly interviewing working men. As a result, the book feels more like a collection of opinion and feelings ("he said this" and "he feels like that") rather than an objective study. For example, business casual is both exalted and denigrated depending on the man De Casanova talks to. Despite her efforts to extrapolate a theory from all these nuggets, there are serious flaws with the way the research was conducted.

All in all, an interesting musing on white-collar dress that doesn't, however, reveal anything new.

[Andréa]

Note: I received a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.