Almost 40 years ago, Gordon Gekko declared “Greed is great” in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” The classic character of Michael Douglas, who donned sharply tailored suit and cut back hair, was depicted by what some believed the financial industry’s titans looked and dressed like.
But gone are the days of the suit and braces, power relationships and polished boots. To be sure, there are fewer people in today’s economic industry than there were when Douglas popularized the Gekko image, and there have also been a lot of changes to women’s clothing. Instead, financiers, especially males, are now embracing a more casual tone and less visible consumption, while also projecting a sense of respect and gravitas. This reflects wider changes in corporate culture, social norms, and customer objectives.
“Bank have engendered, by the very concept of their job, financial responsibility in all their business relationships and should be dressed in a calm capacity but one that also represents their qualifications and integrity”, said Richard Press, who ran J. Before being acquired by the Chinese clothing company Onward Kashiyama in 1986, the newspaper ran its New York for more than three decades. “I think that’s ideal represented by wearing a healthy shoulder dark grey suit with an ideal repp- stripe or symbolic tie that provides the image of macroeconomic responsibility.”
A brief history of company attire
Crucial to understanding the basis for what is considered appropriate business dress immediately for men is the story of tailored suit. The quintessential lender look, according to Derek Guy, a clothing expert who goes by the name @dieworkwear on the social platform X, generally derives from the historic customs of a particular social class in England. Until the last century, American experts split their time, and getups, into two different forms. (For the record, I am an avid admirer of men’s fashion, and as a result, I have concentrated primarily on menswear in this story.) I’ll leave commentary on women’s business attire to others who are more suited to that task.
According to Guy, “the middle class in Britain had wardrobes that were split between the area where they did company and the state where they pursued sport, and those were frequently British estates,” in this case, the city of London.
City wear consisted of generally more conservative clothes. That included darker suits, good shirts, dark footwear, silk scarves, charcoal or dark overcoats, frequently in the Chesterfield design with a velvet collar, and black shoes. Country dress was all about wearing, and may involve heavier wool tweeds, tattersall or tartan shaped shirts, brown marbled leather shoes and tweed level caps.
Gekko’s look, which was created by renowned clothier Alan Flusser, hints of those conventions despite the decades-long evolution of men’s wear styles. The character specifically wore shirts with a more formal, stiff spread- collar reminiscent of an English banker style.
Overall, Douglas’ outfits in “Wall Street” were a composite caricature of the 1980s’ most extravagant details of city banker attire. Flusser based Douglas’ wardrobe for the movie on what Wall Street power brokers at the time wore when they became successful.
When men made a lot of money in those days, they went to Savile Row to get the clothes, shoes, and everything else made, according to Flusser, who referred to the area of London known for its bespoke clothing for men. “That was the top of the sartorial mountain as such.”
According to Flusser, the film had a significant cultural impact. “It was really remarkable. We couldn’t quickly produce clothing to accommodate all the people who were requesting a version of Michael Douglas, no pun intended,” said Flusser. Gordon Gekko continues to have a sort of influence on some people, even if it is unconscious, in the way that some people want to appear.
Press’ Ivy League-inspired men’swear line, J.P.M., has worn the clothes of numerous Wall Street bankers for decades. Press. The business was established on the campus of Yale University in 1902 by Press’ grandfather, Jacobi Press. It still maintains brick- and- mortar stores in major East Coast hubs.
However, Press claimed that many male bankers, particularly those who were Ivy League graduates, preferred button-down shirts with soft, billowing collars that were anchored down by buttons, in contrast to the Gekko character. While often considered a more informal type of shirt in business attire, the buttoned collar style was a signature of Ivy League dress throughout the 20th century and continues today.
“A very large percentage of our custom]and bespoke customers were bankers at the time,” he said. “For daytime wear, their outfits were usually gray suits, whether it was solid, pinstripe, dark, flannel or herringbone.”
However, Guy pointed out that this fashion is decades out of fashion. The suit and tie have been in recession for years now. He claimed that “I don’t think that many people wear that anymore. Over the last 80 years the tie has been on a slow descent and went into free fall after the casual Fridays of the 1990s.”
Things started to get stale.
When thinking about Wall Street firms, there are few more prominent than the white- shoe investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. It’s the organization that young, eager recent college graduates with degrees in finance and economics work for.
Given this reputation, it was rather shocking when the company announced, in 2019, that it was shifting toward a more casual dress code. CEO David Solomon wrote, “All of us know what is and is not appropriate for the workplace,” despite the memo outlining the change’s details. Certain divisions within Goldman had been allowed to dress more casually before the change became companywide.
One news source described the action as “once unimaginable” for the company’s “monk-sheed partners and bankers in bespoke suits” at the time of the announcement. Goldman declined to comment for this story.
The change was a clear illustration of how the banking industry is in decline. This move reflected a broader trend away from formal office attire and tied into evolving client expectations and the growing influence of the highly casual tech sector.
Some objected, though, that there may have been confusion regarding what constitutes “appropriate” office attire.
“They just said,’ You can dress more casually except for times where you clearly need to wear a suit,'” said Guy. We all know what is acceptable and not acceptable, but many people don’t know what is acceptable or not acceptable, according to their vague advice, “And then I think that’s when I thought it was.”
Alex Klingelhoeffer, currently a wealth advisor at the Oklahoma City- based Exencial Wealth Advisors, began his career at a Charles Schwab call center in Austin, Texas, in 2013, right as the company would make a sharp turn in its office attire expectations. According to Klonelhoeffer, norms were relaxed in an effort to appear more approachable shortly after arriving at Schwab. The change meant that ties, rather than being the standard for dressing up, now represented a stuffy and outdated look. Klingelhoeffer claimed the business was dressing casually to stay current.
“You want to look sharp the first year I’m there in 2013 — basically right out of school: a Hart Schaffner Marx suit I couldn’t afford, but whatever, you gotta look sharp,” he said. “The next year, same deal, we’re doing our executive meeting this quarter in Austin we were told ‘no ties, we’re approachable.'”
Klingelhoeffer attributes the rise of technology to the relaxed dress code. At the time, tech companies overtook financial and energy companies to boast the largest market caps and were, therefore, more popular to invest in. A more informal dress code is well known in Silicon Valley. (To reference another popular movie about business, see Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie and flip- flops in “The Social Network”.)
Approachability became more important as a result of the change in the types of clients who attended meetings.
“It went from energy back in like the 2000s, then it was finance in 2005 and from 2013 and on it’s been tech, and whatever is popular from an investment sense, a financial sense and almost from a cultural sense, that’s where the fashion follows,” he said. The thing to keep in mind is that banking is a service industry with a lot of technical stuff, but it’s ultimately about clients.
Klingelhoeffer said the trend has only been amplified over time particularly with the effects of remote work scrambling the traditional workplace model. This is especially true for high-value clients who are no longer required to be physically present or dressed formally to conduct business. Fridays, Klingelhoeffer said, are typically quiet in offices, particularly in client- facing roles, as clients are often away at country clubs or on vacation. Klingelhoeffer stressed the value of being present in these settings to effectively respond to inquiries from clients.
“For whatever reason, for people of means these days: Monday is like a holiday, Friday is like a holiday. You get some work done Tuesday through Thursday, and then, starting on Thursday afternoon, it’s like they’re kind of working, kind of not,” he said. “You used to have clients that show up in a suit or whatever, that sort of thing. You can never see that right now; it’s T-shirts and golf shirts.”
He further illustrates this change by describing the CEO’s attire at meetings.
Our CEO said he would bring jeans, a nice belt, or whatever, along with a nice print shirt to meetings. “To me, that’s like the uniform … that’s what you’ll see like higher powered execs in anytime they’re on camera, more or less”.
Klingelhoeffer noted that while this casual attire is less fussy than the previous uniform, there are regional nuances about what is deemed appropriate. Bankers have to adjust their attire to meet their clients’ expectations.
“They’re all working with private equity guys out of Dallas,” he said when you go down to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, you see a ton of dudes wearing like L. L. Bean fleece vests, socks, and loafers. “Occasionally they’ll throw on some boots and go over to Fort Worth, because they’re helping guys out in the Permian Basin finance their oil companies. So the dress will ultimately come from that, whoever your clients are.”
Jessica Cadmus, founder of Rogue Paq Accessories and a stylist at Wardrobe Whisperer, has made a career out of styling Wall Street professionals. Cadmus stressed the importance of her clients’ projects being polished, made to fit their individual needs, and remaining flexible about their clients’ aesthetic preferences.
“You want to try to match the vibe while always being neat, clean and polished,” she said. She continued, “Ostentatiousness with clients is typically frowned upon. The unwritten rule is to avoid conspicuous consumption, which definitely pertains to attire.”
Cadmus emphasized the value of Wall Street’s personal branding and appearance. While codes have relaxed, there are still red lines for bankers, as certain clothing choices are universally deemed unsuitable for a banking setting. She claims that in many renowned companies, Fridays are typically relegated to denim. And typically larger firms tend to be still more formal in their clothing requirements while smaller companies are more casual. She noted that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs typically set the bar. Morgan Stanley declined to comment for this story.
She said that the majority of my banking clients are either requesting large sums of money or being given the impression that they are trustworthy. Personal appearance must convey trustworthiness or at the very least competence. “Visible tattoos for client- facing employees remains a bit of a taboo]as are ] open- toed shoes for women and white pants for men.”
Cadmus said that some companies are the ones who set the gold standard for Wall Street banker attire. She says Wall Street attire — like the business itself — also reflects a hierarchical culture, where seniority influences attire choices. Although everyone has expectations for cleanliness and polish, the details of clothing change as people advance in the ranks.
“If you just focus on watches, a VP would typically wear a Cartier Tank watch — these days with a leather strap versus a metal strap — and a senior managing director or partner — as they still call them at Goldman — would more likely wear a Panerai or a Patek Philippe,” she says. “It would be disregarded if a junior person entered with a Patek Philippe,” he said.
While subtle expressions of success are still prevalent, she says good taste dictates keeping overt displays of wealth to a minimum. It is more likely that the partner would wear a Timex to work but also have a collection at home that might include a Panerai, Patek Philippe, a Rolex, and perhaps a Favre-Leuba, she said.
Hollie Adams/Bloomberg
Are ties going to end forever?
Wall Street business attire has been trending toward the more casual. However, experts are unsure whether this will change permanently. Guy thinks the days of neckties are squarely behind us. One high-end clothier told me that he now views his necktie collection as a mere component of the store’s decor, as TGI Fridays does those chintzy roadside signs, and that it’s just a way to set the mood, he said.
Some, like Cadmus, have a more nuanced perspective on the trajectory of fashion trends. She acknowledges a shift within the industry away from the incredibly casual norms that developed during the pandemic era, despite her doubts regarding the complete resurgence of the formal styles prevalent in the ’80s and ’90s.
“At recent conferences, my clients were reporting more formal attire overall — suits and no ties, versus what they experienced over the last few years, which was more blazers and no suits at all”, she said. Women have made a significant shift away from the corporate suit, which has been a staple for years, toward dresses, pants, and blazers.
Womenswear, she added, has undergone some of the most stark changes, with dresses and new kinds of footwear being worked into financial professionals’ rotations. She cited the fact that chunky loafers and shorter boots are currently popular among women as well as the trend for Maxi dresses. “Akris has excellent workwear dresses as does Max Mara and brands like The Row, Diane Von Furstenberg and Loro Piana”, she said. “In terms of shoes, block heels have largely taken the place of pumps. This past winter we saw a resurgence of boots that ended below the knee versus the to- the- knee and higher boots we’ve seen the last several years”.
According to data, as the banking sector adjusts to the new standard, there may be a growing cultural movement to switch to slightly more formal attire as the pandemic fades into the background.
As employees make their way back to the office, Rent the Runway, a wardrobe rental service, experienced a significant increase in the demand for workwear rentals during the summer of 2023. This increase suggests that the need for office-appropriate clothing may be returning, a trend that was observed in the first half of this year.
According to the Partnership for NYC, 65% of financial sector employees are back to work, one of the highest rates across all sectors. Additionally, Morgan Stanley’s 2023 annual financial conference observations revealed a notable increase in formal attire, with only about half of the executives choosing to forgo ties, up from 81% in 2021.
Circana, a firm which tracks consumer behavioral data, highlighted a notable boost in the tailored clothing market in 2023, with sales revenue surpassing even pre- pandemic levels by 8%. As professionals adjust to in-person work environments, this resurgence in sales of tailored clothing suggests a resurgence in the demand for traditional business attire.
Made- to- measure menswear retailer Indochino’s record- setting revenue in the first quarter of 2023 further corroborates this trend, signaling a growing demand for tailored clothing among consumers across the board.
The general public seems to be more in favor of a sharper appearance now that the return-to-office trend has grown in popularity. This suggests that it might only be a matter of time before the effect trickles upward, influencing bank clients to adopt more tailored attire, thereby influencing bankers to do the same.
As more and more people purchase tailored clothing, the market has expanded to include styles that meld formality and approachability, like J. Crew’s more casual Ludlow suits and loafers as opposed to laced dress shoes.
According to Cadmus, the biggest way for men to stay up their tidbit is largely losing the tie, and the biggest way for women is largely ditching heels, or maybe wearing them once or twice per week rather than daily,” the pair said. “Loafers are a huge trend and they are meeting that middle ground in dress that is the current sweet spot.”
Guy claimed that professional attire selection can be influenced by relaxed workplace standards. He says the days of being reprimanded for eschewing a tie seem like relics of a bygone era.
“For the guy who tries to just look appropriate for the office, to me that’s not difficult,” he said. “Like you could go to Brooks Brothers, J. Press or even J. Crew, buy a few pairs of at least chinos, if not wool trousers, a button- up shirt and maybe buy at least one tie if you really need it, but you probably don’t,” he said. The good thing about modern fashion is that you can wear anything you want without having to use any tools.
Flusser noted that informality does not necessarily mean poor dress. He argued that being comfortable does not always translate to being schlubby.
“Now the question is, how comfortable can you be, are you allowed to be, and still look business- like”, he said.
According to Cadmus, attire is somewhat a secondary issue with companies still trying to enforce their return to work mandates.
“Things are still a bit all over the place with some people wearing suits at one end of the spectrum, and some people still trying to get away with denim and/or sneakers”, she said.
“Firms are so focused on just getting people back in the building that they are not yet completely cracking down on dress,” Cadmus said.