Business English: What's wrong with my tight dress?

A female manager (27) wrote: The other day I turned up to work in a fairly tight sleeveless dress with a scoop neck and low back. I was taken aside by a woman at my level and told that if I wanted people to respect me, I should cover up a bit more. ... von Lucy Kellaway, London

... But I see other women in my office going to work practically naked and so am confused. Is there really a dress code any more? Does anyone care? Do I really have to roast in order to be seen as dressing for success?

Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:

When I was in my 20s and had just started working for a US bank, I was taken to one side by a female colleague and told that my clothes were all wrong. I had blown my first month's salary on a blue suit from a groovy designer in Covent Garden that was nautical in style with oversized brass buttons and a divided skirt that ended above the knee. My colleague looked at it in disbelief. You look too weird, too attention-seeking and your skirt is too short, she said. Like you, I resented this unwanted intervention; unlike you, I scurried out and bought a frumpy, shapeless navy suit with a long skirt and a stock of button-down shirts. My new look was boring, frumpy and did the trick perfectly.

Lucy Kellaway

Hard to tell: What is the dress code?

But it was different in those days. There was a dress code and only very stupid or very inexperienced people got it wrong. Women had to look like men. They had to hide their sexuality in order to be taken seriously.

Now there is still a dress code, but it is hard to work out what it is and there is no longer any fixed penalty for breaking it. Smart women don't care about being "taken seriously", they just want to get on.

It might be the right dress - or not

There is even a respectable new name for what used to be called "flaunting it": Catherine Hakim from the London School of Economics has come up with the concept of "erotic capital", the possession of which is handy if one wants to get anywhere. People with a lot of erotic capital seem to do better than those without and even those not born with much can enhance their stock with a nice pair of high heels, lipstick and the right sort of skirt. I suspect your colleague may be well aware of this: her "helpful hint" was really a howl of protest at the fact that you have more erotic capital than she has.

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But that still doesn't mean that the dress is a good idea. Depending on the country and line of business you are in, the dress may be OK - or not. It's all pretty arbitrary. We tolerate less flesh from the person who is doing our tax returns than from the person who is cutting our hair. Stupid, really; but that's the way it goes.

Yet whatever your job, the rule of thumb is that sexy is almost always good but tacky is almost always bad. The only time you can get away with tacky is when you are being ironic, and offices and irony mix even less well than offices and bare flesh.

Aus der Financial Times, London. www.ft.com