Goldman Sachs, Patagonia, and the Mysteries of “Business Casual”
23rd May 2019
This tradition—whose foundation is the business suit—is one that changes at a geological pace, and at the moment its magma is hissing. “The U.S. men’s suit market has shrunk 8% to $1.98 billion since 2015,” the Wall Street Journal reported, in March, in a piece that quoted an investment-bank analyst who matches his blazer to his Lululemon stretch pants. Later that month, the top three guys on the management committee of the Goldman Sachs Group devoted their absurdly valuable time to approving a five-sentence e-mail with the subject line “Firmwide Dress Code”; the message alluded to “the changing nature of workplaces generally in favor of a more casual environment” and urged employees to “dress in a manner that is consistent with your clients’ expectations.” In April, Patagonia announced that its corporate-sales program would no longer pursue new business in making co-branded fleece tops for big, scary B2B entities like financial firms, say, or super-tall-tower developers. Instead, Patagonia would develop accounts with companies whose environmental and social values reflect its own.
In these degenerate modern times, even how you dress is political.