Friday, August 17, 2007 Dressing Well: Vanity or Virtue? By Jigs Arquiza
IT'S often been said that “clothes make the man” and that being dressed well gives a good first impression, hence the phrase “dress to impress”. From the Spanish era well into the late eighties, gentlemen and ladies, and even those with the least modicum of breeding did their best to dress well. Suits and dresses were a common sight in the streets, and even the lower classes had a tie or two, or even a jacket or a terno to wear for the more “formal” occasions.
It was a matter of pride that one could, and would, look their best in public, for who would want to conduct business looking like a mendicant or mingle with the members of the Alta Sociedad while looking like something the cat dragged in?
And who would want to go to church not wearing their “Sunday best”, lest their pastor or priest single them out as wearing clothes “unfit” for worshipping the Lord?
Not so nowadays, when it’s already a common occurrence among Pinoys that when one sees a man wearing a suit, joking remarks in the line of “are you being buried today?” often follow. In this day and age, such a small thing as wearing a tie has become an object of ridicule. Most people, even those supposedly coming from the upper classes, don’t even have Barong Tagalogs, suits or formal evening gowns anymore.
“Formal” today has come to mean just a skirt and blouse for the ladies, and for the men, a long-sleeved shirt and slacks, and not even a white dress shirt and tailored pants at that, with nary a tie for added pizzazz. Wearing ties has even been disparaged as being too “elitist”, even in the office. Employees, in some instances, have even reacted forcefully against company uniforms.
It’s become even worse, especially with the entrance of the call-center culture, where the wearing of casual clothes in the workplace has somehow become acceptable. Reasoning that their employees perform better while wearing comfortable clothes, call centers lure potential agents by offering a “nice working environment without a dress code”. Though it may be true that agents do work better wearing comfortable clothes, values like professionalism and loyalty to the company are not given importance anymore, and very often forgotten or discarded in favor of a higher salary at the neighboring call center.
It’s been observed that call centers have the highest turnover rates in terms of employees; where’s the professionalism there, and what kind of work ethic is present when call-center agents hop from one call-center to another every couple of months?
The Catholic Church has even taken a stand, calling on her faithful to start wearing “decent” clothing to Mass, as a result of more and more people going to church dressed inappropriately.
Younger members of supposedly prominent families have even turned their backs on sartorial splendor. Quoting the cliché that they prefer to be “down-to-earth” by wearing simple clothes, they run around town looking like underprivileged members of society, or worse, trash. And when mistaken for hoodlums or prostitutes by other people, or worse, by the police, they cry foul and turn to well-dressed parents with well-dressed lawyers for deliverance. It’s become so that dressing down has become a pretense: the trashier one looks, the richer allegedly one is.
Dressing down is not a bad thing; in fact, it’s actually more tasteful to wear something subdued than to wear something that’s very expensive yet ostentatiously glitzy. Dressing badly is another thing and dressing as if you don’t care is the worst. Dressing well is not just about vanity, rather, it’s also about respect. Dress trashy and people will treat you accordingly; dress nicely and people will give you an extra serving of respect. Not only that, dressing well is a way to give oneself more confidence. More importantly, by dressing your best, you show people that you respect them and care about their feelings and values.
