Once it was so sartorially simple. You dressed up for formal travel and hotel stays, and got a dressing down if you were improperly attired. The rules weren’t clothed in mystery, and you used to know what was the right garb to wear and what not to wear on airlines and for business meetings.
Not any more. The dress code seems to have been rewritten by a bunch of monkeys on LSD. I’ve seen executives conduct meetings in flowered shirts and flip-flops, and was once greeted at an Oriental airport by a man in a sarong. I took him for the driver – in fact he was the CEO I was to do business with.
In a Business Class cabin now, the suit is as rare as the glamorous flight attendant with visible cleavage who pouts and whispers, “I’m Mandy – fly me.” The patterned silk tie has gone the way of the red telephone kiosk. I’m surprised someone has not declared it an endangered species and formed a charity to save it. How Tie Rack makes a profit is always a mystery to me.
It wasn’t always thus. I once saw an American record executive at Heathrow being politely told to change out of his (no doubt very expensive and tailored) denim jeans that tapered off into bare bronzed feet wrapped in Gucci loafers, before he’d be allowed in BA’s First Class.
A bare five years later I witnessed Radio Two DJ Chris Evans slouch into Virgin’s Upper Class cabin on a Los Angeles to London flight, wearing over shorts a scruffy overcoat that reached just above his bare knees, hairy legs and open-toed sandals.
There used to be a golden rule; overdress rather than underdress. I followed it in Brisbane – to my eternal regret. I was invited to a so-called dinner party with business colleagues. I turned up in crisp white shirt, double-breasted suit, Christian Dior silk tie, and highly polished black brogues.
I was more dressed than the salad. Remember those Bateman cartoons where everyone pointed open-mouthed in horror or amusement at The Man Who Had Committed A Social Faux Pas? That was me; The Pommie Who Turned Up at a Barbecue in a Suit. Someone had blundered on that hot Queensland night.
T-shirts, floppy hats, shorts, thongs and flip-flops were the dress code du soir. The mosquitoes buzzed, the humidity quickly overcame my Right-Guarded armpits, I felt like an overdressed monkey and swore someone shouted, “Throw that chimp on the barbie.”
What is it with businesses these days? Even when you get it right you can end up red-faced with embarrassment. On one trip up North I was asked to a company social function and told it was fancy dress. Not normally travelling with a Napoleon outfit or gorilla suit I was forced to hie round to a costumier and shell out for a British Army officer’s dress uniform, red-banded peaked cap and all.
It was a Major disaster. People kept asking if I could sell them a copy of the War Cry. Far from seeing me as the dashing young subaltern I’d fondly imagined I resembled, they thought I was a real-life Salvation Army officer!
Dress code standards have certainly slipped in the last few years, yet to be honest; sitting on an aircraft or in a hotel restaurant now in open necked shirt instead of having that stylish but strangling hangman’s noose round my neck, is akin to shedding a male burka.
But one can never tell when the tailoring Taleban will swoop. I’ve been taken aside – in of all places New York – and told I could not be admitted to a certain restaurant without a tie. They have a supply of them, thank goodness, but it’s a bit like dressing in a charity shop cast off, and it never matches the shirt.
Why can’t someone make up their minds? May I travel in jeans in Business Class – or not? And if I may – should I? If it’s casual Friday when I go visiting clients, do I also have to dress like I’m an extra from Blazing Saddles?
I confess that when I’m in a well-cut suit, good shirt, tie and polished shoes, I not only feel I look the part, but feel the part. If I’m slumming it in stuff I’d wear for a jog or to weed the garden, it takes the edge off my presentation.
We’ve got guides to business etiquette in foreign lands, so how about a guide to modern business travel dressing? What’s that? You think it’s not remotely important?
