www.BreakingOut.NET » Tie Means a Lie So You Buy

Suit and tie business attire.

It has the advantage of providing us with a standard uniform that’s accepted by everyone in all formal business situations.

The trouble with it though is it doesn’t allow us to display much in the way of individuality.

And it has another disadvantage. It enables people to hide behind a front. Because when you wear a suit you are not being yourself.

When you are meeting people, you need to be able to see and understand each other as you really are. The last thing you want are screens and disguises. This only hinders the communication process.

The better dressed they are, the more you have to watch them!

My grandmother used to have a saying: “The better dressed they are, the more you have to watch them”.

You might laugh, but I think that saying actually reveals something very true about the wearing of suits.

The trouble with suits is that they are unnatural, fake and false. They are a costume that is ideal for shysters to hide behind. They lend you anonymity and supposed respectability from behind which you can carry out your deeds. When you are communicating with a suit, you never know for sure exactly who you are dealing with.

They’re also a metaphor for corporate conformity. We talk of “the suits”. It’s shorthand for faceless corporate robots.

Whenever I’ve worn a suit, to me it’s always felt bland, boring, stiff, unnatural, fake and false.

London – city of the suits

My home town London is very much a suit place, especially the financial centre the City of London. But the suit culture permeates throughout London and the country. Maybe it’s partly to do with the convention in the UK for wearing school uniforms. Suits are school uniform for adults.

Even young people in Britain are required to wear suits for work. I noticed it especially on my trips back over from Germany. The streets of central London looked like it was national day of mourning for the death of the emperor or something. It seemed very odd.

I had to wear a suit in my first job in London after graduating from college. I always hated it. I felt I wasn’t being allowed to be myself. I was continually having to put up a front.

Even today BBC breakfast tv in the UK is hosted by a man and woman sitting on a sofa in front of a coffee table – in which the man is always dressed in a suit. Presumably because that’s the way many British males dress for their 9 to 5 and the BBC wants to be “congruent” with it’s audience. It would be “unfair” for the breakfast tv presenter to lounge around on the sofa in jeans and t-shirt whilst the majority of his audience are forcing themselves into suits.

Things tend to be more informal in the work place in Continental Europe. Especially Berlin. But also in Belgium and the Netherlands. The presenter on Belgian or Dutch TV is more likely to be wearing something like a purple T-shirt than a suit.

Luckily I left London and moved to Berlin and so escaped the whole suit thing. Berlin is the very opposite of London; laid back, relaxed. I don’t think native Berliners even own suits. You’re more likely to be stoned in the street if you’re seen out wearing a suit in Berlin!

Later on I worked in Frankfurt, which was more of a suit scene, or at least it was amongst the banks. But even there I would strive to subvert and chip away at the conventions from within.

I used to wear black jeans and boat shoes – that was as formal as I was prepared to go. I loved the dirty looks it would earn me from the staff.

Cufflinking – an even worse crime!

But there’s an even worse crime. At one big German bank I freelanced at for a while in Frankfurt, there was one fellow contractor who used to go in for cufflinking.

Now I’m even more suspicious of cufflinks than I am of suits. There’s something sinister about them that sends the alarm bells ringing straight away. A suit is bad enough. A tie is even worse. But cufflinks are the ultimate in visual bullshit.

And Herr Cufflink was a false yes-man through and through who would do anything to conform. Even on their “dress down Friday” he would still turn up in suit and cufflinks. Needless to say he and I never got on.

The Internet is a suit-free zone

That’s what I like about entrepreneurs in Internet Marketing. Like the IT sector in general, the thing that’s most noticeable about the Internet business community is how informal they are in their dress.

They are honest, open, they don’t hide behind suits, ties or cufflinks.They are themselves. It’s open, it’s genuine, it’s fun and it’s refreshing.

Take Mark Zuckerberg, the founder head of Facebook. I saw him being interviewed by a suit on TV. Mark by contrast, the head of a large billion dollar corporation, was wearing jeans, sneakers and hoodie. He looked at ease, relaxed and he was being himself.

I’d trust what Mark Zuckerberg says in a tv interview much more than I would some besuited national bank chairman.

You might say dress is a minor thing. I venture to disagree with you here. If it’s minor then why do some make such a fuss about it.

Because it isn’t minor. It reflects your attitude. We all know the suit-and-tie look is just a front.

Are you able to be yourself, be honest, direct, with no bullshit? That’s the crucial point about business and communication. That’s really all that matters.

There’s an old saying “tie means a lie so you buy”. I think it’s true.