[Note: This guest post is the first in a series on the academic wardrobe by Courtney S. Danforth, an assistant professor of English at Darton College.--JBJ]
Academics get dinged for bad fashion all the time–by reputation, of course, and also by evaluation (both student and administrative in nature). Though I prefer to spend very little time thinking about wardrobe, as I made related geographical and professional moves last summer, the topic became inescapable. As this semester ends and the gift-giving season begins for many of us, perhaps it’s a good time to examine and evaluate, or hack, our “habitude”–choices and customs of clothing.
In determining habitude, foremost are concerns of personal preference, need, and ability: How do you like to dress? Does your wardrobe support your personal and professional goals? Do you want and can you get a coveted chili pepper? What does your job function require (lab work, lecturing, recruitment, office hours, conferences, etc.)? What will your bank balance allow?
But beyond internal inclinations, whatever our professional conditions, we each respond to the commonplaces of wardrobe around us, whether geographical, disciplinary, or campus-oriented. At different times it may be advantageous to acquiesce or to challenge those customs, but doing either first requires acknowledgment of the commonplaces as they exist.
Geography
Rebecca Mielke at The Space Between My Peers, describes her “Regional Casual Uniform” thus: “here in the Great Northwest, while the bottom may be a skirt, shorts, or pants, there will be something “outdoorsy” about it. If it isn’t denim and/or it doesn’t have cargo pockets, no doubt it is tree-colored.” The casual uniform of my own current region skews disturbingly to the colorful. Beyond colour, geographical regions may share commonplaces of proportion and fabric weight or finish that deserve analysis. What are the commonplaces of dress in your region?
Discipline
Certainly, academic disciplines have their own wardrobe tendencies too. Writing, presenting, or teaching, mine is dominated by a uniform of jeans, black shirt, and edgy spectacles, but I’ll leave it to you to identify your own disciplinary wardrobe customs in the comments. In defining your habitude, the question here is whether you want to participate in or to challenge the wardrobe expectations of your discipline.
Campus
Even if you’re not unlucky enough to work on a campus with a formal dress code, many faculties, departments, or organizations have their own customs for dress which may or may not deserve observation. My campus recently released guidelines that encourage faculty and staff to dress “professionally” such that we can be differentiated from students. Does your campus or department have any sort of dress code? Is it in line with your understanding of personal and academic freedoms? If you can live with it, how do you make it work for you?
Role
Your campus role is another likely influence on your habitude. Administrators are probably more likely to wear ties, and grad students are probably more likely to wear shorts, but (as with any of this) these tendencies are often locally defined. How do people in different campus roles dress on your campus or in your department? Do your administrators wear punk t-shirts and unlaced sneakers? Do your Associate Professors wear corduroy, fleece, or gabardine? Do you want to dress like others with your same role or do you align yourself (by wardrobe if not other characteristics) with another group? If you have them and can draw any conclusions, how do your “superiors” and “inferiors” dress? Are you comfortable dressing to the middle of that spectrum? How do you (or did you) decide on your habitude? Are you satisfied with and comfortable in your wardrobe?
[Image by Flickr user tinali778; Licensed under Creative Commons.]
Comments
1. Julie Meloni - December 01, 2009 at 10:41 am
I don't have any interesting stories of my own (I pretty much wear a black shirt, jeans, and one of three different pairs of Keen or Merrell shoes at all times) but speaking of challenging the wardrobe expectations of your discipline, my advisor made a conscious choice several years ago that she would never, ever wear black to MLA.
2. The History Enthusiast - December 01, 2009 at 11:22 am
You forgot to mention gender! At my uni, male profs can get by with wearing sloppy clothes, but all the women in my department dress "up" in nice slacks or very tailored jean trousers, or else risk being deemed too unprofessional.
Personally, as long as I can wear jeans occasionally, I am fine. Wearing a nice button down, with a fun colored blazer and tailored jeans is my ideal teaching outfit. My part of the country is very laid back, so this easily distinguishes me from 99% of the student population.
3. Nels - December 01, 2009 at 01:18 pm
One of the main reasons I chose academia as a career is because I did not want a job where I had to wear a suit or some generic jacket-and-tie combo. I have never owned a suit in my life and don't plan on it. Too monochromatic. I have no idea what regional dress would be or what people would expect of someone in my role and position. I just love clothes, and I'm known for bizarre colors and bold patterns and funky socks. I had a class once that wouldn't start until I showed them my socks for the day, and I sometimes get comments like "good fashion sense" on my evals. I was once told I was the best dressed professor on campus but also that there was no real competition. A lot of women and men on my campus wear jeans and polos, which is cool. I just like having fun with clothes. My biggest problem is that there have often been few good options for fat people, though that does seem to be changing (since the market is growing, so to speak). I'm finding a lot more options now and am finally starting to dress from head to toe in ways I've always wanted. I think having options is one of the real perks of the job.
4. William Patrick Wend - December 01, 2009 at 04:13 pm
I wear a lot of sweaters, button down shirts, and blazers. Mostly black. A couple of cardigans.
5. drew - December 01, 2009 at 09:12 pm
I'm a Sub teacher at local high schools right now (read as: trying to get into grad school).
Given that I look like many high school students I very often wear a coat and tie to work ( you know, so they wont ask to see my hall pass). Generally if it's a younger age group I don't mind khaki's and a button down. When I first started subbing, I felt that a tie was my security blanket of sorts.
6. Tria Wood - December 02, 2009 at 08:07 am
When I first started teaching as a Graduate Assistant, I was 26 and looked like I was 15. I dressed up a bit more than most other GAs in an attempt to look a bit more authoritative, and that ended up setting the tone for my current teaching wardrobe. Many of my colleagues at my current college dress casually, which is fine, but I would feel strange and uncomfortable doing so.
My standard teaching wardrobe is dress slacks, a blouse, a dressy cardigan, and pumps--more or less the same as when I worked in a "business casual" office during my stint in corporate work. It's comfortable for me, and easy to put together without too much thought in the morning.
7. William Patrick Wend - December 02, 2009 at 06:42 pm
Tria, I totally agree about feeling uncomfortable underdressing. In the one district I sub in, many teachers really, really, dress down. It just made me dress up more and end up looking more professional than a lot of the regular teachers.
8. Aileen Fyfe - December 03, 2009 at 10:28 am
Another variable: method of travel to work. Cycling (especially if it might rain, and you'll need to put on waterproof trousers) limits the options for the female professor. Equally, how far do you have to walk from the carpark, and how muddy will the path be today? That limits the options for footwear. Unless you're going to be so organised as to carry a complete change of clothing, and morph from practical-outdoors-girl into professional once you get to the office.... (I'm currently cycling from a very distant carpark, because parking has got so crazy this semester)
9. Mike - December 04, 2009 at 11:34 am
I'm a professional. I dress as such. The clothes I wear to work indicate that I take my profession seriously, and indicate to my students the respect I hold for what they expect of me in the classroom. My shirts and pants are ironed, I wear a tie except on Fridays, and usually a sport coat unless it's really warm outside. I haven't worn jeans to work since I was a grad student.
As far as the comments about "generic" and "monochromatic" go: how much more generic than jeans can one get? Sport coat + pants + shirt + tie = excellent possibilities for color coordination and contrast, and I use those possibilities full well: I'm one well-dressed assistant prof. (Yes, I own purple dress shirts. And yes, I've worn a pocket square to class.)
10. Rana - December 04, 2009 at 12:41 pm
My clothes are clean and comfortable, aren't revealing, and aren't distracting.... yes, I know that's a pretty low bar. Mostly I'm seeking a balance between what I want to wear - casual outdoor clothing like fleece, jeans, and boots or sandals - and what I need to do to not look like one of my students. If I were teaching in the PNW, or in my field, I would wear that, because it is an expected and normal look for environmental studies folks. Since I'm teaching history surveys in the Midwest, I go for nicer versions (sweaters instead of fleece) of this look. (Just the other day one of my outdoorsy students wondered if I wore wool socks outside of hiking since I'm outdoorsy myself and his friends were teasing him for doing this - and, as I showed him, I was. Handknit ones, true, but yes, wool socks with boot-like shoes.)
I rarely see my colleagues - who tend to be of the sweater and khakis variety, anyway - so I dress for myself and for my students.
I used to be dressier when I felt that my career was actually going somewhere, and I always dressed up for conferences. (I do suspect that, even dressed up, I wasn't quite "right" in my look - my favorite interview outfit was a wool camel pantsuit (I'm female) with a red shirt, which always made me stand out in the sea of black.) I refuse to wear nylons, and I'm not fond of heels, and these two things are a large part of why working in academia is a good thing for me. At this point, however, it's been years since I've worn a suit.
11. Rana - December 04, 2009 at 12:42 pm
(I should add that I don't get paid enough to afford dressy clothes and the required dry cleaning - which I am philosophically opposed to in any case, on environmental grounds.)
12. Nels P. Highberg - December 04, 2009 at 01:30 pm
I had to come back here to add that I saw two faculty members yesterday in crocs. One was a woman who is an adjunct and one was a male tenured full professor. Both pairs of crocs were various shades of brown.
I'm now realizing that my socks would be much more visible if I wore crocs, and that could be fun.
13. Tria Wood - December 05, 2009 at 06:51 pm
I don't like dry cleaning either--all my dress slacks and almost all of my tops are machine washable (and something as innocuous as black slacks can be worn a few times a week without raising any eyebrows). Many "dry clean only" clothes can be washed in the gentle cycle, too.
I've also been known to use the "poor woman's dry cleaning" system of throwing an item in the dryer with a fabric softener sheet and a wet sock to take the stank out of something I want to wear.
Of course, all this depends on you having a washer/dryer handy, which not everyone does.
And all that being said, what works for you, works!
14. Tria Wood - December 05, 2009 at 06:56 pm
William, I can sympathize. My other job (in educational outreach) puts me in other teachers' classrooms, and most of the schools have a fairly strict dress code (no denim, etc.). The teachers are dressed up, and to me this means that I need to dress up as well, partly as a way of extending respect to my host teacher.
15. William Patrick Wend - December 06, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Yeah exactly. The district I began in last year doesn't have a formal policy, but almost every teachers dresses nice so I was happy to join in. As a sub, as much as I despise that feeling of being "invisible" often in regards to regular teachers, I hate sticking out as well...
16. Chip Brock - December 07, 2009 at 08:23 pm
Wow. Culture matters. I'm 60, long-tenured at a big university...in Physics. Was chair for many years. Active and supported in research and teaching...I wear jeans and sneakers, unless its summer, then shorts. Most of my colleagues do too, regardless of gender. When I was chair, I wore jeans, unless I knew I had to be an adult, then I did the sport coat thing, including tie. What shocks me is that there are informal, or even formal expectations in some departments for dress! Live and learn, I guess.
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