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Collars Open And Legs Go Bare

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 14, 2008

Workplace attire, loosened by casual Friday in the 1990s, is now gradually being stripped of two mainstays: neckties and pantyhose.

The trend toward informality is driven by younger workers, many with tattoos and multiple piercings, who don't see the point of clothes that itch, constrict and add heat, especially in summer.

It's a welcomed change in a tropical city like Tampa.

The break with tradition also serves as a sort of badge of competence. In many jobs, the better you are at what you do, the more dress freedom you can demand.

Employees freshest from T-shirt days on campus often know the most about the latest technology. They don't expect much corporate loyalty and don't give much. In the era of contract workers, dwindling benefits and the constant threat your department's mission will be outsourced, workers chafe at dress codes that expect nylon on legs and silk around necks.

A Gallup Poll last year found that only six men in 100 wear a tie to work every day. In 2002, it was 10 in 100. That's a drop in the ranks of the necktie league of 40 percent in just six years.

The trade association that represents tie-makers, the American Dress Furnishings Association, looked at dwindling tie sales and increasing market share going to foreign producers, and decided to close shop. The first producer of pantyhose, Glen Raven Mills of North Carolina, now makes awnings.

Trend-setting actors are appearing in suits without ties, and actresses are showing up in dressy skirts and bare legs.

More than 10 years ago we noted that on Fridays the folks around town were visibly more casual. Now, every day is beginning to look like Friday. If you see more than a few people on the street dressed up in ties or stockings, you're probably near the courthouse, a wedding or a funeral.

At some unrecorded points in Tampa's history, the last man wearing spats and the last woman to wear bloomers strolled the sidewalk. They might have wondered what the world was coming to, but they couldn't have guessed right.

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