The New Power Suit: Power Less? The New Power Tie, the Power PDA?

Posted by: Michelle Conlin on September 17

The Street is burning. So is the idea of the power suit actually conveying any power.

Since I am obsessed with all things sartorial, I couldn’t help but be riveted by a recent Wall Street Journal story about fabulously powerful people who self-ban the wearing of suits. Also: at last night’s powerfest celebrating DealMaker magazine’s 40 Under 40—at tony Stone Rose in New York City’s Time Warner Center—many of the players—crisis be damned—were still going all casual.

Is wearing a suit now the sign of a macher manque? Is the new power tie the power PDA? So says the researchers over at TheLadders.com.

After all, when was the last time you saw Barack or McCain in a tie?

In the course of my reporting travels during the past year, all of the sources with whom I interviewed who had the largest power footprint—wielding the most clout, capital, and all around career cushiness- were all adorned in anything but a suit. Note the legions leaving Lehman in shorts and flip-flops. Perhaps the suit/tie as power totem was guillotined by Google’s commandment #9: You can be serious without a suit.

By contrast, when I recently did a favor for a friend and picked up her repaired Tag Heuer at Tourneau, the watch salesman was donning a three-piece summer-weight number that was decidedly NOT off the rack. A lucre side gig? Family money? Power user of Woodbury Common?

I’ve noticed this a lot in the service sector: they are all dressed up, while we in Corporate America are all dressed down. Even the halls of once-starchy P&G and once white-shirt-only IBM are filled with some awesomely casual gear.

The upshot is that if you want to see someone turned out in the above-shown Gekko gear, you are more likely to see it on the body of a Barney’s salesman than in the lobby of a midtown hedge fund. In these circles, the new uniform is the dry-cleaned, $250 jeans paired with a bespoke shirt and couture jacket. The women are rocking the jeans with the shrunken, little-girl blazer.

The power suit is becoming powerless. Wearing whatever you want now seems to be the new emblem of a new kind of power. As in, I am so incredibly amazing and fabulous that corporate dress codes and social norms do not apply to me.

Is this one more upside-downism in a world that seems increasingly topsy turvy?

Jeans (albeit crisp and pressed): the New Power Wear?

TrackBack URL for this entry:http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/