How Do Americans Dress In Offices?

When my friend Steve Cooper moved from England to Silicon Valley in 1999, he happily left all his suits and ties on the other side of the Atlantic. Every day, like real California people, she wore Polo T-shirts, shorts and sandals, and there was no need to change business meetings.

He thought he could live this comfortable life, until one day he walked into a boardroom of a big Vc firm, and found a room full of suits, including two casual partners. Only he was wearing a Polo shirt, his shorts and sandals.

Similar embarrassing scenes have been experienced by many people, and I have.

In any country, how to dress in office is a headache.

We have countless opportunities to meet people for the first time. From job interviews to visiting customers, the importance of first impressions is no longer needed.

Even in the office every day, personal appearance should not be neglected.

If you work hard and wear sloppy clothes every day, your boss may not be willing to take you to a client or promote you to management.

My personal feeling is that most Chinese prefer to dress casually or dress more ceremoniously than others because we are very low-key, so we'd better not be labeled with a good limelight.

People who work in domestic and foreign companies and securities companies may dress formally because of the requirements of the company. But most of the leaders and senior executives in the state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and government departments that I have contacted do not always like to wear a suit tie.

In some social occasions, even if the formal dress code is specified, many people will dress casually.

A friend of mine attended the alumni meeting of the China Europe International Management School in Beijing two years ago. The invitation was written on men's suits and ladies' dresses. She spent the winter trying to dress up in an evening dress. It turned out that most people were present in jeans and casual clothes.

Americans look casual on the surface, but sometimes things get complicated.

Casual colleagues will suddenly dress up very formally, like foreigners like me and Steve.

How can we avoid embarrassment in the United States?

I asked two office etiquette experts, Gretchen Neels and Ann Marie Sabath, what the biggest trick of professional wear is, and the answer of two people is exactly the same: "don't dress for what you are doing now, dress for what you want to do."

That is, if you want to be promoted, see how your boss and boss wear clothes.

The two experts felt that the reason why American companies were confused in their work clothes and casual clothes was that the dressing style of "business casual", which emerged from Silicon Valley in the seven and 80s of last century, is to blame.

Everyone should remember that Bill Gates was wearing the biggest cargo Jersey and released the latest software of Microsoft. Yang Zhiyuan's YAHOO wore the most common lattice shirt for demonstration.

The two men now wear suits (though still few tie), but Apple Computer's Steve Jobs still wears black turtleneck and jeans for decades.

Over the past decade, the trend of "business and leisure" has intensified.

In many companies, khaki pants and jeans are no longer reserved for casual Friday.

Now that all employees are required to wear suits every day, even the law firms and some companies on Wall Street allow employees to wear casual clothes without going to court or meeting customers.

A friend at Wall Street investment bank said his company allowed jeans to wear every two days.

The problem is that many young Americans think that leisure is the way to wear college clothes to the company.

My colleague, "fashion" columnist Christina Binkley wrote an article saying that young assistants in law firms only wear suits when they go to court. They usually wear anything from yoga pants to UGG snow boots.

This made them grow up with their suits.

Some companies think young people such casual clothes lack the minimum respect for work, and begin to try to reverse this trend, specifically stipulating what can be worn and what is not.

Although I am not going to wear yoga practice pants to the office, I have always thought that business recreation is the best invention after toilets, so there have been several awkward situations.

I only bought a suit in my life, which I bought for the interview at Wall Street journal. My trousers also went through one or two times, and I never touched my coat after work.

From Monday to Thursday, especially when I want to see the interviewee, I will pay more attention to wearing a decent wool cardigan and skirt.

But Friday is my day to wear jeans.

One Friday, I suddenly received the notice that Otellini, President of Intel, was coming to the newspaper editor's office in the afternoon, that is, the reporters and editors from the editor in chief to an industry.

I wore a seven cent jeans that day, not only pockets but also holes.

Our newspaper dress tends to be "business casual", but because it's an economic media, it's not a mess.

I felt a bit of a mess that day and sat there feeling very professional.

In fact, even some restaurants and clubs in New York's old school do not accept my own definition of "business casual" style. Some places require men to wear suits and jeans and sneakers.

On a Friday last summer, a friend and I decided to go to the famous Campbell apartment cocktail bar at Manhattan central station.

When I got to the door, I was blocked because I wore a pair of sneakers (it rained that day).

Later, I checked the website of the bar, and I really said, "no baseball cap, T-shirt and sneakers will be served."

A few weeks ago, I met with a friend at Yale Club.

The day before, she wrote emails to remind me, "don't wear jeans!"

If you want to make fewer mistakes in this respect, you have to rely on your friends to remind you, or you can observe them and take the initiative to inquire about them.

The problem is that some people simply don't know what's wrong with what they do.

Office etiquette experts, Neels and MS. Sabath, are often employed by large companies and talk with foreign employees about how to better integrate into American corporate culture. In fact, they often talk about the third person's status as a manager.

They often need to talk about American hygiene habits with foreign employees: bathing, shaving and changing shirts every day.

Never assume that everyone understands this.

A Chinese friend who worked in a financial information company in New Jersey told me that a new Chinese colleague came into office last autumn. He was gentle and courteous, but he wore a brick red sweater and a coffee striped sweater every day for three months. He looked very untidy, but absolutely different from the habit of changing clothes every day in American companies.

A Chinese colleague could not help but gently remind him that it was immediately effective.

He changed to a light sweater and khaki trousers for second days, but this body wore for another three months.