Shorts at the office? Go for it

By Sarah Carmichael

AS SUMMER heats up, the vicious debate that has held our polarized nation hostage is reaching new levels of vitriol. I’m talking, of course, about the rift between men who wear shorts to the office, and those who consider them a workwear abomination.

On the West Coast, particularly in the tech sector, wearing shorts to the office is perhaps unremarkable. But in parts of the Northeast, ask a man if wearing shorts to work is acceptable and he may well scoff, “Only for the UPS guy.”

And so we’re deluged with versions of the “can we wear shorts ?” question. “It’s a very bizarre taboo for me,” says Derek Guy, a menswear writer and the comfortingly authoritative voice behind the X account. “It’s totally normal to wear shorts, and whether you can wear them to the office depends on the office.” It may be a complete nonissue for, say, graphic designers. But white-shoe banks and law firms are another matter.

Yet more and more buttoned-up East Coasters are wondering if they can ditch the long trousers at last. They often point to global warming — last month was the hottest May on record, marking the 12th consecutive month of record temperatures. And women, after all, have long had the option of wearing floaty dresses to work (where we shiver in the air conditioning). Why can’t men show a little leg, too?

But it would seem that, whether Bermuda or cargo or athletic, pleated or denim or chino, shorts aren’t just shorts. Offices are always rife with power dynamics and pecking orders, an ecosystem worthy of David Attenborough narration.

Which forms of dress are acceptable “comes down to norms, and belief systems about professionalism, and how that’s intersected with gender, with race, and with body type and with other structures of power,” says , dean at the school of Fashion at Parsons/The New School. There’s a class dimension too — shorts may be more closely associated with those doing physical labor: roofers, park rangers, and yes, package deliverers.

Of course, the world of tech and startups invented its own rules. There, the power move is to dress like you don’t care. But that too sends a signal. “It wasn’t just that people were dressing down,” says Guy, “It was a symbol that you only cared about meritocracy and that you did not care about the old ways… the only things that mattered were your skills and your ideas.” Think of Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodies or Sam Bankman-Fried’s shorts-with-tube-socks combo.

Although it’s often said that women have more freedom of dress, Guy and Barry think that’s been overstated. Women’s skin tends to be sexualized in a way men’s isn’t; a woman showing “too much” thigh in an office is likely to be judged in moralistic terms. A woman might be able to get away with “formal shorts” (something of an oxymoron) at the office more readily than the average man, but a woman who completely eschews style to SBF-esque levels runs a greater degree of professional risk. And keep in mind that women didn’t have “office clothes” until relatively recently — most female labor historically happened in the home.

Yet for men, at home or out of it, some version of the dark suit has dominated for centuries — Barry points to 18^th-century-born dandy as the one who made it fashionable. And professional clothes seem more resistant to change than our casual attire. Even if a London barrister prefers baggy sweatpants on her weekends, she’ll still argue her cases in a white wig.

But the meaning of clothes does evolve. A century or so ago, a three-piece suit was called a lounge suit and seen as far less formal — a kind of 19^th-century athleisure. Think of those grainy photos of men mountaineering in wool trousers, complete with jacket and waistcoat. And if the Patagonia vest was once a symbol of an outdoorsy lifestyle, it’s now become something else entirely: a way for desk-bound men to signal their aspiration to spend time in nature, or just a way to display their membership in a particularly preppy tribe.

So, what about the shorts? Showing skin used to be a real no-no for men in office environments. But as dress becomes more casual (a trend that’s accelerated with the adoption of remote and hybrid work) and mainstream men’s fashion increasingly appropriates from queer culture, says Barry, showing some leg is no longer seen as the same challenge to professionalism or masculinity.

Or as Guy puts it, “I don’t think it’s a big deal to see a man’s knees.”

Many younger workers agree with them. Older workers may push back on new fashions not because of any practical reason, but because they feel threatened — changing office fashions are a very visible signal that a new generation is gaining ground.

Back in 1971, Harvard Business Review on how’d they’d respond to a “capable young manager in a financial services company” who suddenly sports “long sideburns” and “bell-bottom trousers.” Fully half said this hippie attire warranted a managerial sit-down, and another third said if his clothes irritated people he should “change his ways or begin hunting for another job.” That leaves fewer than one in five who said his groovy threads were purely his own business.

Today’s office may no longer be quite as conformist, but the frontline of fashion is always advancing. Who would have guessed, in 1971, that half a century later we’d be dealing with ?

That’s one way to cope with global warming, I suppose.

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