Let's Get Casual

When I first visited the late Andy Markopoulos at his Dayton's office in downtown Minneapolis, he greeted me wearing a navy blazer, pressed beige slacks, highly polished loafers, a light blue shirt open at the collar and, around his neck, a jauntily tied scarf. And he apologized.

“Forgive me,” he pleaded. “It's casual Friday.”

That was 1994, in the early Casual Era. There were few rules for men, and infinite interpretations – until one word came rumbling down from the mountaintop to give “casual wear” its structure. That word was khakis.

If you want to know the real reason for Gap's stunning success in the waning years of the last century, it wasn't the swing dancers or the cleverly integrated web site or the Gap merchandising tables. It was the reassurance khakis gave to ambitious young men who needed to know how to dress casually without offending the boss. Gap and Dockers and Haggar gave them the blueprint.

But the khakis everybody bought in 1996 and 97 and 98 lasted a long time. Styles didn't change. You could wash them, dry them, wear them. Buy five or six at a time and you were set for the Mesozoic Age. They matched everything, were appropriate for everything. You could wear them in the rain, you could wear them to the game, here or there, anywhere. It was easy to see how khaki demand soon dried up for retailers.

Worse, “casual” continued to evolve. Or, as Jim Mitchell, director of store design at Saks, asks rhetorically, “What has happened to retail? Take a look around your office.”

“Casual day” today means absolutely nothing! It's no longer Friday – it's every day. And the rules have vanished again. Once we got used to wearing a shirt with no tie to work, how long before we got used to a shirt with no collar? A sweatshirt? A T-shirt? Once we shelved the wing tips one day a week, sneakers were just a step and a half away.

Now what do we see? Jeans. Shorts. Sweats. Cut-offs. Sandals. Sneakers. T-shirts. And who's suffering? Brooks Brothers. Florsheim. Nordstrom. Marshall Field's. (To say nothing of decorum, manners, style and taste.)

An Armani tie at my local Saks Fifth Avenue had been marked down so many times, the label listing the markdowns was nearly as long as the tie itself. It was now an additional 70 percent off, and relegated to the scrap table with Zegna, Canali, Calvin Klein, DKNY and Hugo Boss. You know how tie displays survive eight hours on the “70 percent off” scrap table. So much for the cachet of an Armani tie. So much for Saks-level visual merchandising.

Jim Mitchell would like to see a return to some higher standard because, in part, he works for Saks. And they sell ties. And suits. And grown-up shoes.

I would like to see a return to some higher standard because, in part, I'm a product of an age when wearing an ascot to work, instead of a necktie, would bother somebody like Andy Markopoulos.

I'm not suggesting “casual wear” is foreshadowing our civilization's downfall. I don't imagine that Emperor Julius Nepos stood at the gates of Rome in 475 and told his subjects, “People, please lose the casual wear. What will the Visi-goths think?” (However, scrolls of the time do show drawings of Roman citizens wearing what look like tank tops and baggy painter's pants, and with well-tattooed biceps. And, come to think of it, it was a Friday.)