We Need to Tell Them ‘Clothes Make the Man’
Long ago and far away, when I was a student at Columbia, we boys wore Oxford cloth shirts, silk ties, and we shaved, washed our hair, and showed up in class with our teeth brushed and our breath fresh and clean.
The ONLY place I see decent clothes now is on the bodies of the young, hip, and black.
We looked like mensches. Now, students look like homeless. They are an embarrassment to the school and to themselves. In 1967, when I started at Yale Law School, we were neatly dressed, and looked as if we were ready to go into court versus Hamilton Berger ready for blood.
In 1970, when we were getting ready to go out to earn the staggering sum of $300 per week to work a sixty-hour week, we dressed in J. Press neckties and Peal & Company tan bench-made loafers.
I look around the law offices I occasionally see now in glorious Los Angeles. The boys and girls look as if they are on a crime show as fugitives from justice. When I see lawyers that I know are “earning” six-figure annual salaries, they look as if they should be hiding up in family hunting lodges far from a paved road.
Why? Why have the appearances of the young lawyers collapsed? And this is not just about men. Women lawyers look like servers at nail salons, too.
Why have the appearances of us male and female lawyers changed so negatively? Why has it become the fashion to look like bums and/or street hustlers?
It’s a scary thing to see our professional men and women look like slobs. Does it make us look as if we are so rich and so powerful that we don’t really care what anyone thinks of us? Do we show up for “dates” dressed like rapists and sex traffickers?
Where did the idea come from that the slobbier we look, the smarter and more competent we are?
I don’t know where it came from but I well know where it should go — and soon. Is this “wokeism”? Is it anti-racist? Far from it. The ONLY place I see decent clothes now is on the bodies of the young, hip, and black.
Let’s pull ourselves together. It’s not too late.
READ MORE from Ben Stein:
A Letter to My Favorite Grocer
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