Erynn Masi de Casanova

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… (mer)