Tie them with a Tie

'An online survey conducted among 12,500 people in 24 countries by research firm Ipsos reveals that 66 per cent of workers feel senior managers who run the organisation should always be more ‘dressed up' than their employees. More Indians, than their counterparts across the world, want their senior management to dress ‘smart' or formal, and not casual. The sample included 1,000 Indian respondents...Indians, in particular, do not see casual dressers rising up the ranks, with 64 per cent saying they would not make senior management, and 58 per cent describing casual dressers as ‘slackers'...

Only 27 per cent of respondents from Europe claimed the same...'

No wonder we are still developing country... Read an excellent column by T.C.A. Srinivasa-Raghavan that appeared in Business Line few months back. Here it goes:

Formal's sake?

T.C.A. Srinivasa-Raghavan

When I was 13 years old, I spilt something down the front of my school uniform shirt. The school was an old colonial one, which I was obliged to attend very briefly. So we also had to wear a tie, which I had taken off.

It was while putting it back on that I had my great Newtonian or Archmediean moment. Ties, I concluded, were meant to hide stains.

I was very pleased with this great discovery and went and told the curmudgeonly old Anglo-Indian master about this great moment of truth. But of course he was scathing in his response. “It's to keep you warm, you idiot,” he said.

Many years later, I had to attend a National Day function at an embassy in Delhi. It was late September but the card had said that the dress had to be lounge suit.

So there we were, all the men, resplendent in our lounge suits, sweating like horses on the humid lawns. It was awful.

But the women were all wearing flowing clothes. The Indians were in saris and salwars, and the East Asians were in sarongs, while the European women were in loose flowery skirts. Not just that. The poor men were all in shoes because suits need shoes. They also wore socks, while the women were in chappals and sandals.

It was then that the words of the old Anglo schoolmaster came back to me in all their profundity and I had my Second Newtonian Moment – if layers of clothing such as provided by suits and boots were meant to keep you warm, why were we wearing them in the tropics, that too in summer?

Since that day, which I like to think of as my Day of Deliverance, I have not worn a suit in India, even during Delhi's fairly nippy winter. I wear only khadi bush-shirts, mostly white — which led one young colleague to ask me once if I had only one shirt — and chappals or sandals. My only genuflection to the Delhi winter is a pair of socks.

East Asian explanation

A few weeks ago, I was invited to give a talk to some East Asians in Baroda, which is not a cold place by any reckoning. They were all in dark business suits and at some point during the talk, I said we Asians were great imitators, including in the matter of what we regarded as ‘formal' attire.

One of them, a Vietnamese I think, was sufficiently provoked to say that although he found western formal wear a real imposition, he (and the others) wore it because it made for greater acceptability. I found that appalling but then what does one do with such attitudes?

I wanted to tell them that dignity was a state of mind and acceptance based on clothes — the Japanese and the Koreans have even switched to teaching their children western classical music only — was not really genuine acceptance. But I didn't.

I think as India regains her confidence, Indian men should switch to clothes more suited to our climate. After all, why should girls have all the fun?

(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated February 26, 2010)