New Goldman Sachs Dress Code Points To A Sartorial Double Standard In The Workplace

Goldman Sachs, one of the last bastions of crisp-collared, bespoke-suited workplace attire, has loosened up. It announced an official “firm-wide flexible dress code” earlier this month. And at last — after the long, slow undoing of corporate formality — business casual seems to have triumphed in the American workplace. But for women and minorities who have been playing corporate catch-up for decades, a more casual dress code presents its own complications. As one Goldman Sachs banker in GQ put it: “All the men are psyched.” For everyone else, dressing more casually for work can be fraught, even risky. Over decades, expensive suits have projected power on Wall Street, almost like a piece of “armor,” said Susan Scafidi, academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University. Read more at Los Angeles Times.