Every girl may be crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man but there aren't many left: the hegemony of American Casual

American Casual means men no longer appear to make an effort beyond making sure the shirt is clean and the trainers don’t have mud on them.

Like all of the rest of you I looked at the pictures of gangs of brown-hued men charging through the shallow waters of a Kent beach. But tumbling unwanted into my head came this question: what are they all dressed like Americans, scruffy Americans? Beneath the life jackets we see branded hoodies, t-shirts, jeans, sports wear and training shoes. Almost without exception these Eritreans, Afghans, Albanians and Syrians are dressed in the same clothes as suburban Americans. Why is this?

Male dress is, it seems, becoming more and more standardised with a $350k per year software engineer in San Francisco dressing in the same (albeit more expensively branded) style of clothing as a homeless refugee from the Middle East or South Asia. And it’s not just an age thing since, as I sit and type, I’m wearing jeans and a branded t-shirt. What we might call ‘American Casual’ is now the dominant form of male dress everywhere (except the White House where not wearing a suit results in severe tutting). The worst thing about this appropriation is that the mass hordes of men across the planet have adopted the laziest, scruffiest style (if it merits the word ‘style’ at all) imaginable.

When I first became a commuter in 1979, the trains from my part of South London into the city were filled with men in suits, shirts, ties and polished black shoes. And, back in those days, the western men’s style appropriated by other world cultures was this business suit, a trend we still see whenever world leaders gather, a sea of dark blue suits interspersed by the pop of colour from the occasional female head of state or folk like Fidel Castro performatively wearing scruffy military fatigues.

I’m not sure when this trend started but, when I worked at an advertising agency in the late-1980s I recall our Creative Director arriving at work wearing a magnificently artistic sweatshirt. The agency owner’s response was along the lines of “creative yes, director no” indicating that arty dress was fine so long as it conformed with the suit and tie that our clients expected (even from creatives). In our (female) boss’s mind the right style was Don Draper.

Today, on the same train from Kent House to Victoria that I took all those years ago, the male commuters (if my more recent commuting experience into Leeds is a guide) will present a bewildering collection of styles. There’ll still be a few suits (although it is reported that very few, less than 5% of employers now have any sort of dress code) but the dominant style will be that same American casual as the refugees arriving on that Kent beach are wearing: jeans, casual shirts, trainers, hoodies and anoraks. Being sharply dressed now seems to be the preserve of politicians and wedding groomsmen, every other bloke makes no distinction between workwear and what they’d wear to walk the dog. I’m as guilty of this as the next bloke, I joke to my wife when we are getting ready to go to a good restaurant that it takes me two minutes to put on clean jeans and a polo shirt.

There are a few hold outs for decorum. A couple near us always dress for dinner even when it is just the two of them and they’ve made the dinner themselves. Part of me likes this idea but then my inner laziness kicks in and I tell myself jeans and a t-shirt is just fine. Shirts require ironing and hanging up and suits entail sizeable dry-cleaning bills. So, like those men on the train, I wear clothes little different from the ones penniless refugees are wearing.

The change in men’s attitudes to working clothes can’t be pinpointed to a particular time or place but it does reflect another influence directly from American, and I suspect Californian, culture:

“...Silicon Valley software engineers, who weren’t necessarily as daring as the hippies but were too valuable to fire over such things. Casual dress has frequently become a signal of being a young, hip, and exciting company, and so companies that want to compete for top talent - such as tech talent - frequently have permissive dress codes if they even have one at all. Those employment market pressures are so pervasive that even famously-stuffy sectors like finance are being forced to allow employees to dress more casually.”

Because Silicon Valley is still at the heart of technological innovation and California still dominantes film and TV, the way Californians talk, eat and, above all, dress sets what we might call the “style for success” and this means the ‘American Casual’ of jeans, hoodies and trainers. When “style for success” was set by New York and, before that, London, the business suit dominated and even people in Los Angeles would routinely wear well-tailored suits. And this standard attire has one benefit in that you don't have to think much beyond the choice of tie and hat, in the world of American Casual what to wear is a perennial dilemma:

“In some sectors, this has led to the emergence of “dress-for-your-day” policies, according to Fahy. “This is a flexible dress code that allows employees to choose what they wear based on their work activities and who they’re meeting that day,” Ford explains. This means that, while it might now be acceptable to wear a T-shirt and jeans in the office, there’s an expectation individuals will wear a smarter outfit if meeting a client.

These “informal” dress codes, as Ford describes them, can still influence what people wear to work. “People are always searching for a way to dress appropriately. No one wants to be caught out wearing the wrong thing, whether it’s too formal and then you look ridiculous and uptight or it’s too casual, then you look sloppy or as if you don’t care. So people are trying to find that sweet spot and often end up copying each other,” he says.”

The ubiquity of American Casual is not, I think, one of the USA’s better contributions to human culture and it seems, like hamburgers from a plastic tray, a triumph for not making an effort. Back when going to a restaurant meant a man would shave, smarten his hair, polish his shoes and don a suit, men were making an effort to impress (just as were women). Today American Casual means men no longer appear to make an effort beyond making sure the shirt is clean and the trainers don’t have mud on them. Women, on the other hand, are still putting in that effort to present themselves well, to dress to impress.

Maybe it will all change again and, as ZZ Top told us:

“Clean shirt, new shoes

And I don't know where I am goin' to

Silk suit, black tie (black tie)

I don't need a reason why

They come runnin' just as fast as they can

'Cause every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man”