Reddit Male Fashion Advice Band Collar

TL;DR--If you lot're a millennial who is unsure what they should vesture to work, you lot should try wearing a banded neckband shirt. Below is an explanation (perhaps an over-analyzed explanation) of why.

This Seems Like a Lot of Thought To Put Into A Shirt

I'm not naturally someone who thinks a lot about the clothing I wear. I have clothes that I accept worn since middle school and repaired multiple times, and I don't match my socks because it is the most fourth dimension consuming office of doing laundry and provides very fiddling benefit. Outside of a item pair of overalls and a detail jacket I love, I mostly have treated most of my wear equally interchangeable. Terminal year something happened that inverse this.

Which is why I'm writing a k give-and-take thought piece on a shirt.

(The shirt that launched a thousand words)

I noticed that I wore a specific shirt equally often as I could and I wanted to buy more of them. It was a chambray banded collar shirt (also known as a mandarin collar or a Nehru neckband) that I don't even remember buying.

I went to become buy more of them and the company that produced it no longer fabricated the same shirt so I bought some comparable shirts from different brands and whether fit or fabric, they invariably sucked in some manner. I went to the point of ownership fabric and having my friend who's a costume designer have it apart to make more than.

But this sparked the question: why did I want to habiliment that shirt all the fourth dimension?

For context, I work in fintech. I speak at conferences, I pitch investors, I work with engineers, I have coincidental drinks with potential partners, meetings with bankers in suits etc. I likewise do performance poetry, play Magic the Gathering obsessively, and like to hike and do trailwork. In that location is no dress code for me.

I am non lone in this. In the co-working space I used to work out of in that location was a pretty jarring mish-mash of more and less "business similar" clothing--gym shorts at hot-desks side by side to business organization casual, pantsuits filling up coffee next to yoga pants. I imagine a lot of the people there face the same problem. If I wore a T-Shirt and people showed up to a coming together in suits I would feel similar my underdress was a problem (fifty-fifty if for no other reason than making them experience overdressed), and if I wore a business organisation casual collared shirt and pants I would experience stodgy and lame when having a coming together with a crew of hoodied tech folks.

As a general pragmatist I was attached to the idea that I didn't care how I looked, but now that I was thinking virtually it--there's a reason I didn't spend all my fourth dimension wearing grey dystopian-utilitarian jumpsuits. Office of the utility of article of clothing comes from the semiotics of your outfit: what is communicated by your wearable is of real, practical business organisation.

Semiotics and Clothing

Semiotics is basically the study of things that communicate pregnant (literally the study of "signs"). It tin can be understood in terms of language, but also can apply to almost annihilation-- for example, the construction of an prototype conveys a lot through symbolism and signalling.

To give an example, why practise news anchors sit at desks and wear suits? Why does the text at the bottom of the screen scroll by, creating urgency? This entire epitome is constructed to convey potency, trustworthiness, and immediacy. In day to day life nosotros besides use our clothing to imply group membership, signal status, etc.

https://www.akerink.com/anderson-cooper-highlights-importance-of-journalism-encourages-reporters-to-continue-seeking-truth-at-annual-cronkite-luncheon/

These semiotic signals coalesce groups into creating uniforms like the tech bro zip up hoodie ensemble, which derives from the Silicon Valley'southward hero worship of the "drop-out child genius" archetype.

https://readwrite.com/2014/05/02/soma-street-style-hbo-silicon-valley/

When y'all wait for it, there are plenty examples of this: the seasonal liberal arts wealthy female yuppie uniform that changes yr to year (Canada Goose and Uggs, or Burberry coats and Frieze boots, etc.), the frat-bro gym shorts and pinnie, the brooklyn barista flannel buttoned to the superlative with beard and heavy rimmed spectacles, what-have-you.

Your article of clothing conveys a message, whether yous craft that message or not. And then what'south and then tricky about piece of work habiliment for my generation?

Understanding the Millennial Workwear Trouble

The problem that the chambray banded collar shirt solved for me was a semiotic problem faced by a lot of millennials. Our work lives are entirely dissimilar those of previous generations. Information technology feels out of identify to habiliment collared shirts and pants because we are semiotically attaching ourselves to a group that experienced a totally different form of career. We are not spending our lives building upwardly 401ks in single institution corporate careers. We are the most likely generation to switch jobs, tend to take early career hazard in startups that provide low salaries in exchange for the option like exposure to potential payouts from future exits and nosotros work side hustles to augment income based on the ease of creating small scale businesses with the growth of ecommerce (Etsy, Shopify, etc.) and the availability of flexible hours through the gig economy (Uber, Lyft, etc.). Nosotros often work remote, engage in multiple projects simultaneously, and have a much higher degree of self-direction in our careers.

In exchange for this liberty (and the possibility of a greater degree of self appearing versus the corporate being nosotros eschew as cog-like), we trade out access to benefits and ensured financial security. Given that we strive toward different goals and face dissimilar challenges than a 1980s lawyer, the semiotic burden of an unrelatable history of professional identity makes collared shirts unfit for our professional lives. At least it does for me (which includes the "new corporate" patagonia vest, chinos, and button down). It would point inaccurate group identity.

https://twitter.com/Hipster_Trader/condition/1187352572581044224

Fifty-fifty if you take the other extreme of Silicon Valley's boy-genius hero worship costume-- it all the same carries a semiotic burden of unprofessionalism to show upwards to meetings with banks (or, honestly, anyone) looking like y'all simply stopped by later on rolling out of your dorm room bed on the way to a form. And I retrieve that the cult of the higher drop-out will sour as people realize that 1-offs of individuals uniquely early to the coding game from the early nineties through happenstance in youth does not a replicable investment model make (the ability to write lawmaking is commoditized), and the new generation of companies exported to public markets from the privately overvalued VC/Silicon valley fugazzi wilt in the light of public reporting obligations when they IPO (in 2 years y'all should probably take that early buyout offering from Google because your future IPO is not going to make what you retrieve it will, and in half-dozen years when Google early on buyout offers become less generous because everyone knows you can't cut it in public markets you lot should notwithstanding have it--I could write some other article on private marketplace valuations, and I likely one 24-hour interval will). Needless to say, I'm not trying to signal group identity with those guys either.

https://therealdeal.com/national/2019/09/22/can-we-work-without-adam-neumann/

The Solution

The banded collar chambray shirt threaded that needle for me. Information technology carried different, nuanced, semiotics that didn't push button me into either category. It was professional person without beingness reminiscent of an 80s lawer. Information technology was unlike and casual without being sloppy. I could wear it to see banks, billionaires, coders, or friends. It was as suitable in a boardroom as a dive bar, similar me, and I wore it all the time because information technology accurately mirrored that counter-intuitive combination in myself and my lifestyle.

I even spoke to friends with similar careers, and many of them also had that one banded collar shirt that they wore all the fourth dimension and didn't know why. I think there is something here about a forming group identity of new professionals that value cocky-management over certainty, pragmatism over prestige, and creativity over obedience.

Maybe, if some of this resonates with y'all, try one out.

(Disclaimer: I'one thousand entirely focused on Men's wear in this. This is in part because it plain relates more than directly to my experience, just is as well because I call back the semiotic challenges women face in the workplace--especially in our generation-- are significantly more complex.)

EDIT--ADDED BELOW (February '20):

What are you doing about it?

My friend and I decided to start a reddit-native community to design clothing based on feedback/ideas from folks, and a banded collar shirt is our first product. We've already made the first version, given it to some folks to try for costless, got their thoughts and are working on a second (improved) version now.

Further Reading:

Silicon Bro Example

Gallup on Millennials and Job-Hopping

Hacker Noon on Dress Codes

Vogue Article on Women's Workwear

Millennials and Side Hustles

Semiotics and News Case

And, for the Sake of Self Promotion, an Article I Wrote About the Clothing Industry

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