dress circle

I watched The Devil Wears Prada last night. My rating: 3/5.
Nice movie. Some inspiration for writing today's post came from that movie.

In the IT industry there are two types of people. One who dress well and those who do not dress well (or rather say they do it shabbily). And then there are people like me, who do it casually. People like me do not belong to any of the above cast or creed or whatever you want to call it. There are days when I am dressed to kill, just to be followed by days where I want to kill myself. But this post is not about just me. So read on.

Dressing sense of people changes with time and experience. So when people like me are just out of college, our wardrobes are filled with faded jeans, low rises, boot-cuts. Tees or casual shirts that can go over anything makes the other half. One or two pair of floaters or sports shoes. And there you are, all set to work. Now if I was a rock lover, I would surely want to flaunt my Metallica t-shirt collection at work. All the footballers showoff their jerseys and boots (studs, as they are called) the same way. Casual to the core.

People up the ladder (corporate ladder I mean), are mostly in the better dressed category. It's demand of their job to be like that. So all set in formals they are one of the picture-perfect employees for any company. They hold the grace of their experience and position on their face and surely live up to it.

People in middle of hierarchy are the ones who delve into one or the other category. From my experience I can make a comment that people who are into too technical side (or whom we call individual contributors) always belong to the shabbily dressed group. They don't bother about anything. For them its just they and their work. So beard grown like a jungle, same shirt for a week (or may be they have 5 piece of it, i don't know), chappals - its their trademark style. Their work speaks for their smartness.

Interestingly, most of the managers and leads are well dressed. It really speaks how important is to dress properly. They are the most smart and cunning lot and surely have learnt from their experience. They are there to set examples. Their team looks up to them for inspiration. And with my experience I can surely vouch that a guy who is well dressed and well behaved is much more effective than anyone else.

Another interesting thing in companies which have no dress-code policies, is the trend of wearing company tshirts. I see tshirts of at least 6 companies at my work place. Add to it team tshirts and then the ones designed for special occasions. The bevda (boozers) group in my company has come up with a tshirt of their own too. They can always make a style statement in them.

And for the people like me, I am nowhere. My identity is in the fact that I dress casually. So I can be seen in a kurta over a jeans on a day which is not Friday. In my previous company, my manager used to come in shorts on Friday, I tried 3/4ths and khadi there. It was fun. Don't forget my jhola. My manager had actually asked me if I was doing any part time journalist job.
Today when I dressed in formal attire, everyone was looking at me in surprise. :)