August 05, 2003

Academic fashions

Posted by Henry

Via Invisible Adjunct, I see that Bob at Unfogged has had a smart idea -academic reality tv. His proposal - Ph.D. Island - desperate Ph.D. students, with tenured faculty sitting in judgement, awarding one lucky candidate a half-way decent job in a half-way decent city.

It’s a nice concept - but I have an alternative proposal. I reckon that we male social scientists are in urgent need of a different sort of reality tv. All of us could do with some serious input from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Academic lawyers have their bow ties, b-school types have their Armani outfits. We have our badly fitting blue suits. Anyone who’s ever been to the APSA annual convention, and seen several thousand of these suits milling about a hotel lobby, checking out each other’s name badges, has glimpsed the very bowels of fashion hell. I’m not exempting my own dress sense by any means - I’m a classic exponent of the anonymous slacks, blue shirt and bland tie combo myself. We all need help: if there has ever been a profession that could do with a serious makeover from the fashionistas (whether they be gay or straight), we are it. TV producers - I’m waiting for your call.

Posted on August 5, 2003 01:58 AM UTC
Comments

And everyone knows how well economists dress. Yeah, I’m in for this.

Posted by kb · August 5, 2003 02:16 AM

Economists’ dress sense is only marginally fashionable, naturally.

Posted by Kieran Healy · August 5, 2003 02:27 AM

Funny, I was just thinking about a quiz show where philosophers competed with Joe Schmoe in resolving various hypothetical moral dilemmas and defending them, with the audience voting on who’s solution + defense they thought was best.

Not that it’s a good idea, of course….

Posted by Walter · August 5, 2003 03:08 AM

We’ll have to have the makeover quickly. APSA is at the end of this month!

Posted by James Joyner · August 5, 2003 03:14 AM

Come to Debbie’s wedding Henry. I’ll wear my cool ass Beige suit with the black pin-sripe shirt and loud tie. It makes me feel like a Goodfella. I wanted to wear it at the one in January, but that turned out to be black tie (and I still maintain I had one of the best Tux’s there, as far as Tuxedoes can vary from one to t’other.)

Posted by Daragh · August 5, 2003 05:27 AM

How generous of you to exclude female social scientists from your little project, but I’m not sure the generosity was warranted. I can think of more than a few women who can use the help — the problems are a little more diverse than in the case of the men, but they are still urgent problems.

I hear from a reliable source that, at their disciplinary meetings, economists and political science people are most dressy, the anthropologists are the least dressy, and the sociologists are in the middle. But being in the middle has its hazards, because instead of just throwing on that badly fitting blue suit, they have to make actual decisions about clothing. Which they are mostly ill-equipped to make.

While I haven’t had the chance to watch Queer Eye, I doubt I’d find those guys to be a better choice than Trinny and Susannah from What Not to Wear.

Posted by Laura · August 5, 2003 05:46 AM

EngLit academics vary in their dress sense according to age and specialisation. As a c-18-er, I suppose I’m expected to head off towards the world of shabby genteel once I give in and look for a teaching job. (Think Tom Paulin, representing for the dix-huit via Hazlitt.) Or pinstripes. Moderns get away with ‘gay or eurotrash’ roll-necks and velvet jackets, which means that they wouldn’t need a queer eye; Victorian types tend to like their frills; anything pre-renaissance, though, and it can be a toss up between grammar-school student/professor and charity shop doyenne. (dsquared can back me up on this, I hope: does the green corduroy-yellow sweater combo ring a bell?)

All of these are, of course, hideous generalisations, and dependent upon Oxford-style periodisation rather than Cambridge-style theme specialisation. Still, I’m no judge on what Germaine Greer wears.

Historians seem to do better. Possibly because they make more money from their books. And get the TV tie-ins with the complimentary wardrobe. David Starkey has the advantage of all that, and of having a gay man’s dress sense. (I know, I know, terrible cliché.) And Simon Schama looks pretty dapper most of the time.

Actually, there’s your show: David Starkey’s Academic Makeover. ‘And this week, Harold Bloom: just how long have you been wearing that jumper?’

Posted by nick · August 5, 2003 08:52 AM

My friend (and Imprints co-founder) Alan Carling writes in his essay “Rational Choice Marxism and Postmodern Feminism: Towards a More Meaningful Incomprehension” of his experience of APSA:

….you have to hand it to US academics: they sure know how to organize a conference that feels like a serious business convention. There were actually men and women there in suits, especially those silver-sheeny ones in a mottled semi-reflective material that looks as if they descend from a job-lot of curtain lengths delivered by UFO somewhere over Colorado circa 1955… By dressing below this level, it was possible to regard oneself as a marginally dangerous intellectual presence, or at any rate a marginal one. (In the UK, by contrast, it is physically impossible to dress so low as to be the worst-dressed person present at the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association).

In Rational Choice Marxism, ed. Terrell Carver and Paul Thomas, Pennsylvania University Press, 1995, p.301. and previously quoted by Chris Brooke over at the The Virtual Stoa.

Posted by Chris Bertram · August 5, 2003 09:06 AM

The funny thing is, social-science academics are the well-dressed ones on campus. Wander into a physical science department, and you’ll see much worse than ill-fitting blue suits.

Several years back, Physics Today ran one of its periodic soul-searching articles about what’s wrong with physics as a profession, and asked a whole bunch of people to suggest why it was hard to attract students. One of the answers was, basically, “Look at how you people dress! Nobody wants to be part of that…”

Posted by Chad Orzel · August 5, 2003 01:02 PM

I have long assumed that the reason why economists (including myself) dress the way we do is that it’s a perfect example of an externality; we don’t have to look at ourselves.

Posted by dsquared · August 5, 2003 01:39 PM

“I can think of more than a few women who can use the help — the problems are a little more diverse than in the case of the men, but they are still urgent problems.”

Yes. Women have more options, which means we also have more opportunities to get it all wrong. On the other hand, there is an entire industry devoted to women’s makeup and fashion. From the drugstore to the grocery checkout, the sources of advice are everywhere, and they are hard to ignore.

So I do think men need more help.

A couple of hints for male social scientists:

Lose the polyblend trousers.

Blue suits are for court appearances (as a defendant).

Silk ties are not more expensive than polyester, and the difference in quality is far greater than the difference in price.

Outside of the academy, the unhappy compromise known as the “short-sleeved dress shirt” is considered an oxymoron.

Posted by Invisible Adjunct · August 5, 2003 02:37 PM

I can’t speak for every business school, of course, but I have toured pretty much all the top ones, and I challenge you to find an Armani suit anywhere. (Wait — I did have one well-dressed professor, Toby Stuart. But he’s clearly the exception that proves the rule.) In my experience, business school academics come in three sartorial types: ill-fitting “slightly irregular” suit from Today’s Man (because the ROI on a better suit is clearly negative); slightly better-fitting suit from Brooks Brothers (it’s a signalling mechanism); and “my God, professor, wherever did you find mint green tweed?” Of course, since their students seem to think that khakis and a polo shirt are the height of fashion, anything more would probably be wasted.

Posted by Jane Galt · August 5, 2003 02:39 PM

Laura:

I hear from a reliable source that, at their disciplinary meetings, economists and political science people are most dressy, the anthropologists are the least dressy, and the sociologists are in the middle.

I think you’re on to something: I just spent far too much money for a simple pair of pants and a new sport coat for a meeting this month, at which point my biologist-ecologist wife proposed that formality of dress decreases with the possibility that one might work outdoors . It’s quite common for ecologists to wear shorts and t-shirts to their annual meetings (prestige comes from the t-shirt’s logo, of course: Is it from an exotic research station?), but lab-bound biologists are still decked out in suits. Anthropologists at least have a good possibility of seeing the sun in the course of their work; sociologists, well, maybe through the window or while doing field work; economists and political scientists — I don’t know, do they have windows?

Physicists (and mathematicians?), of course, hoe their own row, as Chad pointed out.

Posted by Alan · August 5, 2003 04:09 PM

Computer Science seems to be an exception to the “probability that you’d work outside” rule. T-shirts sporting semi-offensive slogans or advertising some product or other are pretty much de rigeur at CS conferences, and yet CS types generally strive never to see the sun.

This is pretty clearly a case of signalling. By wearing shabby (and hopefully offensive in some clever way) clothes, you’re indicating that you’re someone who does real technical work, which means that you don’t have to dress well. In fact, “suit” is the derogatory term for management, sales, and marketing types who dress well. I suspect there’s also an element of Zahavi’s “handicap principle” here. If you’re able to dress badly and still get ahead, you must be pretty smart.

Posted by EKR · August 5, 2003 04:26 PM

In biology, dress sense seems to vary by field and correlate with funding. In my experience, well-funded biomedical types (molecular oncology, immuno, etc.) tend to dress considerably better than their less well-funded molecular genetics/cell bio peers. And, of course, Howard Hughes grant recipients are the best-dressed.

Posted by susan · August 5, 2003 10:58 PM

Elaine Showalter, then-President of the Modern Language Association, actually had a piece on academic fashion run in Vogue about 7 or 8 years back. Only women’s fashion, though.

On my campus, the fashion divide is clearly disciplinary: the scientists wear jeans, T-shirts, & Tevas; the Arts & Letters types wear, well, artsy stuff for the women, and jeans & dress shirts for the men; the social scientists wear suits.

At professional conventions, the rule is different: if you see someone in a suit, 10-1 s/he’s on the job market…

Posted by Ruth Feingold · August 6, 2003 02:47 AM

Political scientists are wearing suits these days? The men used to wear khaki pants (a bit too short, and a bit too tight around the waist), a blue shirt, a navy blazer, and an ugly tie. And comfy shoes, like Hush Puppies or Wallabies or something. But I haven’t gone to APSA (or been in academia—so I like the Ph.D. Island show a LOT) in more than ten years, so maybe they’re wearing suits now.

I laughed out loud at the short-sleeved shirts comment, too.

Posted by carla · August 6, 2003 02:57 PM

I dunno when you people ever get off campus, but short sleeved dress shirts WITH TIES is pretty standard ‘business dress’ where I work. business ‘casual’ is the usual khakis with a polo, (for casual Fridays of course), but otherwise you’d better be wearing a tie. Funny, the comment about signalling, because anybody around here without a tie is usually either the facilities personnel (janitors) or the computer operators, or network people, who are just rude mechanicals in contrast to the developers who actually write the code. (sarcasm).

Posted by eric · August 6, 2003 06:16 PM

I’m a little late to this one, but most of the people at the conference I was just at were dressed pretty well I thought. (Present company excepted, but then I dressed badly even when I was in law school, so this is hardly attributable to my being an academic.) Maybe because this was a summer conference (so no job market) full of young people, but it certainly wasn’t the fashion disaster that some people may think covers all of academia.

Posted by Brian Weatherson · August 8, 2003 01:50 AM

I agree with what I think ekr’s point was.

If yer wearing a suit, you’re a facilator/admin bod (or in search of funding) or if yer in general “go-to-hell” mode, you’re at still at the pointy end.

Mind you, I went to Art College where the general dress code (for both staff and students) was either the first thing you found on the floor that passed the smell test and/or 20 minutes with the black nail polish.

Posted by Nabakov · August 8, 2003 10:26 AM
Followups

→ Queer Eye for the Straight Social Scientist?.
Excerpt: Henry at Crooked Timber has another idea for a new reality show:I reckon that we male social scientists are in urgent need of a different sort of reality tv. All of us could do with some serious input from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Academic lawye...

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.