The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World is on a vacation that involves lakes, extended family, heated board games between said members of the extended family, and at least one delightful foray to the Norman Rockwell Museum.
This is the perfect setting to rest and recuperate from a pretty bad cold caught during recent travels. It is a very bad setting to serve up commentary on, oh, I don’t know, what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent thinks he is doing (see Paul Krugman for more on that sticky wicket) or just how much Pete Hegseth’s wife is running the Pentagon.
No, while on vacation the hard-resting staff here at Drezner’s World would like to tackle a much more serious question: should men be able to wear shorts to the office?
I ask because last month the New York Times’ David Coggins weighed in rather emphatically on this matter:
The long, hot summer can drive men to strange places. The stifling weather tests our collective powers of reason, like air-conditioners taxing the power grid. The latest idea, which would mortify Oscar Wilde, George Plimpton or your grandfather, is for men to wear shorts into the office. Yes, dress codes are frowned upon by the casual generations, but do you really want to see your boss’s knees?….
Your suit looks singularly uninviting. Maybe you gave up the suit years ago, but even your drab “business casual” options feel oppressive. Instead of a grinding commute, you want freedom, air circulation and thermal relief. You want, in other words, to wear shorts to the office.
Of course you do. Shorts are leisure, shorts are release, shorts are pleasure. Shorts are not on deadline, making stock trades or writing quarterly reports.
But the man who wears shorts to the office is telling everybody that he wants to be somewhere else. The fact that he really does want to be somewhere else does not excuse this. I know this is a time of perspired need, but please reconsider….
Did Don Draper, exemplar of midcentury Midtown chic, wear shorts to the office? Of course not. Did Gordon Gekko, corporate raider and breakfast abstainer, wear shorts to meetings with companies he was about to liquidate? No, he slicked his hair back, snapped his suspenders into position and feasted on insider information. What about a kinder office denizen, Jack Lemmon in “The Apartment”? Brooks Brothers-style suit, shirt and tie and a smile for Shirley MacLaine….
Is this a superficial, old way of thinking? You think that clothes are simple self-expression and this is all arbitrary? Then ask yourself if you’d hire a lawyer who wears spandex shorts in the courtroom. An accountant or agent who showed up to a meeting looking as if he stepped straight from a pool cabana? Clothing still has the power to convey expertise and to reassure. That’s why pilots wear uniforms. And you’d be turning right around on the jet bridge if you looked into the cockpit and spotted madras, bare legs and flip-flops.
But wait, you say, these are nice shorts, of tobacco linen made by a company that shot its lookbook on Ischia. Well, that’s great — save them for when you’re wearing espadrilles, nursing a Negroni and having lunch at three in the afternoon far from the imperatives of capitalist enterprise. But today we’re in the city, getting work done and possibly loathing our lives. At least we’re wearing trousers.
That self-sabotaging last paragraph makes me wonder if Coggins was merely taking the piss out of New York Times readers. As a fun late summer exercise, however, let’s take his argument at face value. Is he right? Should gentlemen sitting at desks be clothed completely below their necks?
As someone who likes to wear shorts during the summer but usually wears pants to work almost every day, this is an interesting conundrum to ponder while on vacation. Goodness knows my knees are not exactly eye-catching, so I am sensitive to the idea of wearing clothes that do not raise the eyebrows of my co-workers. At the same time, being overheated is not exactly a spur for greater productivity.
With this in mind, a few thoughts:
Let’s acknowledge what this is really about: the overwhelming advantage women have in the workplace over the summer months. Sure, women have endured countless millennia of violence and misogyny and discrimination — but sundresses are a godsend for the summer and men do not really have an comparable article of clothing. The fairer sex clearly has a sartorial advantage and this cannot stand is all I’m saying here.
Coggins fails to offer a viable alternative to suffering in sweltering suits during the summer — which is, duh, wearing copious amounts of linen. Linen clothes are great — light, breathable, and casually elegant. Most of my summer wardrobe consists of linen shirts and slacks. Linen is no longer all that expensive either. My sartorial advice to men is to wear linen during hot summer days.
Even in downtown offices, the summer months usually operate on a slightly different rhythm than the rest of the year — and clothing can reflect that shift. Shorts every day for the summer might be a bit much, but just as there are casual Fridays, shorts Fridays — a signal of a beach weekend to come — seems perfectly appropriate. No one wants to be at the office late on a Friday during the summer — dressing as such should not be a mark of shame.
And now the hard-resting staff here at Drezner’s World will take another well-earned nap. Debate this fashion question amongst yourselves.
AMEN. Also “tennis dress shoes” with white soles. Dumbest idea since brown shoes with a bright blue suit. No brown in town I say.
If you live in a place where shorts are just part of the daily routine -- where they're *not* intrinsically a statement -- wear the shorts, do the work. Or wear the suit and do the work. But, above all, read the room. And if you don't like how the room reads, maybe this isn't your place.