Brilliant Bainbridge
posted by Frank Pasquale
Though I’ve had my disagreements with Professor Stephen Bainbridge, I’m cheering his recent broadside against law-prof-attire-improvement initiatives:
At age 49 (almost), life’s just too short to be uncomfortable. If I could get away with it, I’d teach in sweats and a vintage Redskins jersey (which, after all, is my non-teaching day uniform). As it is, khakis and an open collar shirt are as far as I’m willing to go.
Bainbridge finds support in the unlikeliest of sources:
“It’s always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting.” – Jean Paul Gaultier
Since Bainbridge has nicely covered the libertarian bases here, let me add a few more angles. First, as a 6’7″ person with size 15 shoes, I have found it virtually impossible to find nice suits and shoes at a fair price. The average-sized have the pick of clothing, while outliers are reduced to scrounging the scraps. Why hold us responsible for a market that won’t meet our needs?
Moreover, whatever challenges men face in the clothing world, women can face downright incapacitating standards. Just take a look at this report on high heels from the Washington Post. The musculoskeletal toll is undisputable.
Then there’s my old concern about fashion as a positional good. There are always going to be winners and losers in the appearance game. If every law prof decided tomorrow to put on some outfit that’s considered perfectly elegant today, don’t be surprised if the standards start rising in a few years. Polished shoes will need to be Prada shoes, and perfectly serviceable pinstripe suits will need to give way to Thom Browne bizarrerie. So why even start the positional arms race?
Finally, there’s a practical/corporate angle here. At my old law firm, casual dress became the norm because that’s what the clients were wearing. Innovators at many new economy powerhouses have gave up the discomfort of suits for the relative freedom (and egalitarianism) of dockers and polos. Their share prices certainly aren’t hurting.
Photo Credit: ABC, Ugly Betty.
October 20, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Posted in: Culture
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Responses (16)
Eric Goldman - October 20, 2007 at 9:36 pm
This may be an area where we benefit from a race to the bottom. Eric.
T - October 20, 2007 at 10:16 pm
There is a difference b/n nice causal type clothing and some of the crap people wear these days. If we are to be taken serious as professionals then we need to take our appearances serious as well. There is no need for the Armani and Gucci attire, but a nicely tailored suit is a must in my opinion. Call me traditional, but an office where everyone wears professional clothing says a lot about the business. I have been at court and witnessed attorneys with their ties on backwards and hair an awful mess. Just think what these individuals would wear if casual dress was allowed. The problem with going casual is that it opens the door for people to wear crap to work. Nice kwakis and polos are ok for days when you don’t have major business, but once you lose the neck tie you start down the slippery slope to allowing anything to be worn to work. Just look at these contemporary church services these days. People wear ANYTHING, shorts included, to these services. 10 years ago that would have never happened.
TR - October 20, 2007 at 10:17 pm
There is a difference b/n nice causal type clothing and some of the crap people wear these days. If we are to be taken serious as professionals then we need to take our appearances serious as well. There is no need for the Armani and Gucci attire, but a nicely tailored suit is a must in my opinion. Call me traditional, but an office where everyone wears professional clothing says a lot about the business. I have been at court and witnessed attorneys with their ties on backwards and hair an awful mess. Just think what these individuals would wear if casual dress was allowed. The problem with going casual is that it opens the door for people to wear crap to work. Nice kwakis and polos are ok for days when you don’t have major business, but once you lose the neck tie you start down the slippery slope to allowing anything to be worn to work. Just look at these contemporary church services these days. People wear ANYTHING, shorts included, to these services. 10 years ago that would have never happened.
hahaha - October 20, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Another day, another deeply confused post about positional goods. If academics treated clothes as positional goods, then, profs would have already dressed like fashionistas from Madison ave. Academics have had decades if not centuries to club each other into the damaging designer-label competition, but this simply never happened. Wearing expensive clothing is commonly viewed as declasse in many corners of the academy. If anything, the academy is becoming less dress-conscious, not more: young profs almost never wear suits, much less fancy designer suits. There is no evidence, zero, that clothes are positional goods in the academy, and there are very few industries (outside the fashion and entertainment industries) where clothes really are positional goods. Get a grip already.
P.S. Bainbridge is not a libertarian. He is a conservative.
P.P.S. Which “libertarian bases” are “covered” by Bainbridge’s unwillingness to wear a suit? Libertarians never said people shouldn’t wear suits, or that employers should not demand that employees wear suits. Incomprehensible gibberish.
Thomas Otter - October 21, 2007 at 2:00 am
“Business” casual is an evil thing. It removes the sartorial elegance of the suit and tie, replacing it with the blandness of pleated trousers, striped shirts and penny loafers. It creates an illusion of freedom, but it imposes far more than it frees up.
Either let people wear what ever they like, or impose a set of standards that allow people to differentiate between work and home gear. Business casual gradually turns everyone’s wardrobe into a conservative middle-aged country clubness. I enjoy a round of golf, but I have no desire to inflict golf attire on anyone other than fellow golfers. When I own a string of polo ponies, I’ll start wearing button down collars. I believe that yachting shoes should remain on yachts.
http://dfof.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/business-casual-is-evil/
Frank - October 21, 2007 at 7:50 am
T makes some good points, and perhaps a line needs to be drawn between a good “race to the bottom” and a bad one. I don’t know how do draw it, except to say that I’m not trying to defend slovenliness!
As for hahaha: If you really believe positional goods aren’t a problem in academia, I’ve got a rankings system to sell you. But I guess under your way of reasoning, if something hasn’t been a problem, it won’t ever be, right?
As for the “libertarian bases,” I’d think a libertarian would want to be able to do what they want to do. But you’re right, there’s also the right of the employer to do whatever they want to do. Since regulation might be required to protect the former, I suppose you’d opt to advance the latter. So perhaps libertarianism amounts to the right of the more powerful to have their way (you’ve come a long way, Thrasymachus!). Though I guess it contains multitudes:
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010344
Margaret - October 21, 2007 at 7:56 am
I’ve sworn that when I finish law school and can afford to buy my own suits — right now I’m wearing my MBA sister’s hand-me-downs — I’ll wear nothing but pantsuits with elastic waists. I’ll wear sneakers to work, since I’m always on the bus and subway, and keep the nice shoes in my desk drawer for meetings with clients and partners.
hahaha - October 21, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Frank, every sentence you wrote in response to me is, ahem, patently ridiculous.
First, the fact that a person treats one good as positional surely does not mean that he treats all goods as positional. Academics are highly competitive in their publications records, but most of them have no interest whatsoever in designer bags. Unless you can link journal titles to bags (and you can’t), just you stick to the issue that you raised in your original post. Second, school rankings are not fully positional goods either (and very few goods are truly positional, by the way – something you seem to repeatedly misrepresent). A school’s high rank has a very substantial material component – higher pay, better research support, lesser teaching load, etc. Third, plenty of people choose lower-ranked schools because of various other benefits (location, job for a spouse, salary, possibility of deanship), so academics are surely not overwhelmed with positional considerations even where positional considerations exist.
This is a non-sequitur. Here is the proper sequitur: If X has never been a problem, and nothing seems to have changed, the burden is on the person who claims that X will become a problem to show why. You haven’t produced a single piece of evidence showing that clothing, which has not been a positional good in the academy before, is likely to become one in the future. Seriously, you’ve shown nothing at all — just empty speculation.
That’s a ridiculous fantasy. In most markets, employers have no monopsony in hiring and therefore aren’t any more “powerful” than employees. Even where employers have some monopsony power, that power is not infinite, and thoughtful employers use that power to extract benefits valuable to employers (e.g., wages or work hours), and not nonsense stuff like shoe brands. I’ve seen no evidence (other than hysterical cries from crits, who rely on nothing but anecdotes and narratives about narratives) that regulation is needed to “protect” employees from dress code requirements.
But notice that your anti-libertarian outburst is in conflict with your nonsensical claim that clothes are “positional goods”. If clothes were positional goods, then, there would be no need to have dress codes in the first place – employees would have happily driven each other into great appearance without any intervention from employers. (Unless, that is, employees want to wear Prada, while employers prefer Dockers… I am dying to hear you arguing that).
Frank - October 21, 2007 at 1:50 pm
As for the claim emloyers “aren’t any more “powerful” than employees;” do check out Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed. And for evidence of enforced conformity in dress, see Ramachandran’s “Freedom of Dress: State and Private Regulation of Clothing, Hairstyle, Jewelry, Makeup, Tattoos, and Piercing,” at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=872324
hahaha - October 21, 2007 at 4:21 pm
That’s the best you can do? A piece of journalistic rhetoric by Ehrenreich? And a typical crit outcry, characteristically free of data? Both are now proofs of employers’ monopsony power?
If you’ve conceded the silliness of your “positional goods” argument and want to switch to something else, couldn’t you at least offer a reputable source? Like, you know, a real paper with numbers?
Frank - October 21, 2007 at 5:16 pm
hahaha: People who believe that a “reputable source” must amount to “something with numbers” remind me of James Watson: “There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.” I’d be willing to compare Graber’s work on processing the news with any quantitative study of politics in terms of quality of research and depth of insight. Could you give me a quantitative study I can match Ehrenreich’s work up against?
The post above was offered in a spirit half serious, half fanciful (see, e.g., the Thom Browne link). But your indignation gives me a useful data point: just how threatening positional goods theory appears to those who are capable of reducing the question of the relative power of employers over employees to that of whether the former have a monopsony. A secondary indication of a theory’s validity may well be how well it provokes unconvincable ideologues.
hahaha - October 21, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Oh, that’s precious. My unwillingness to take Ehrenreich’s silly rants as evidence of employers’ “relative power” is now the proof that I am an “unconvincable ideologue”? Make sure to add the rest of the reputable social-science academy to the same category. And your post had something to do with a “positional goods theory”? What would that theory be? That we need regulation to curb the deadly designer-label competition among academics? Or that we need regulation to stop schools from demanding that professors get clean haircuts? Both are such terrible, pervasive problems indeed.
What you’ve heard in this exchange is not “indignation”. It’s laughter. Truly, you are a gem. From the series of “I could not have made it up.”
Frank - October 21, 2007 at 10:54 pm
I am proud to be mocked by anyone capable of dismissing Ehrenreich’s moving account of the demands of lower middle class life as a “silly rant.”
Here’s some more humor for you, from a recent Krugman column:
Conservatives Are Such Jokers, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.
But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”
Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs. If you’re poor, if you don’t have health insurance, if you’re sick — well, they don’t think it’s a serious issue. In fact, they think it’s funny.”
On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip … providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.”
In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh. …”
And on the day of the veto, Mr. Bush dismissed the whole issue of uninsured children as a media myth. …”
It’s not just the poor who find their travails belittled and mocked. The sick receive the same treatment.”
Adam - October 22, 2007 at 9:34 am
I’d be pretty disappointed to spend $100 at a restaurant where the staff is dressed like a bunch of slobs.
I’ve be very, very disappointed to sign up for a $100,000+ law school and discover that the faculty shows up looking like they just rolled out of bed.
Frank, I’m not sure why you’re leaning on vague anecdotal support (“Innovators at many new economy powerhouses”) for your position. The history of Silicon Valley has more than a few business-casual-business-failures for each of its business-casual-business-successes. Do critics of your position prevail by citing Brobeck?
Zorkmid - October 22, 2007 at 2:22 pm
What’s a “fair price?” Do you want to pay the same amount for a suit as a normal-sized customer, even though your suit requires twice as much cloth and twice as much labor to sew it? (Not to mention the carrying cost to stock clothes few people ever buy.)
Anyway, I would trade my right-on-the-median size for your extra-tall size in a heartbeat… women seeking mates prefer taller men so strongly that a median-sized man needs about $87,000/year more income to even be competitive with a 6′-7″ man!
astonished - October 24, 2007 at 8:59 am
hahaha: Are you this condescending and sarcastic in person, or do you just act this way when you post anonymously on the Internet? You’ve made some interesting points, but it’s hard for me to take them seriously when they’re buried in such mean-spirited messages. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not against criticizing other people’s views; that’s one of the main purposes of this blog. But a little bit of civility never hurt anyone.
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