Scruffy British office workers should put a damn shirt on

Telegraph

20-06-2025

Finally, British bosses are getting tough, and workers are heading back to the office. John Lewis is insisting on a minimum of three days a week, while Conde Nast, whose magazines include the likes of Tatler and Vogue, is demanding a minimum of four. The Telegraph insists most of its workers are in the office five days a week, my dispensation excepting, as I have to be out for lunch for most of the time in your service.
And one very clear indicator of this cultural shift back to sanity is that the smart shirtmaker TM Lewin is gearing up to open more shops. It recently opened a new store on Bow Lane in the City of London, with the company saying it will open other stores in the capital as well, in cities such as Manchester and Edinburgh. Which is wonderful news because it could be an opportunity for this nation to return to sanity on another issue: dress.
I'm frequently drawn on social media to old footage, often colourised, of Britons walking the streets in the past. And it's heartbreaking not just to see how handsome our buildings and wide avenues were, and with the appropriate numbers of people and traffic, but how well dressed everyone was. No man is without a suit and hat, no woman without a dress, even the children are in jackets and trousers.
Today, we are a nation of slobs, and the word dress doesn't even cover it, as many people's notion of clothing is not to dress at all, slouching out of bed to haul their sorry, often obese, forms onto the streets dressed in trackies and T-shirts.
So let's use the return to the office as a watershed moment and consider that, as work is a professional endeavour, so we should honour it by dressing appropriately.
Buy a suit, get a shirt, hell, you can even shove on a tie. And let's help the next generation get off on a good foot by scrapping mufti Friday. A headteacher I know says they dread Fridays because when the kids wear what they want, their behaviour worsens. She can't wait for Mondays when the kids turn up prim and proper and remember again to say, please, thank you, and to shake their teachers' hands at the end of the day.
Research from Philadelphia's Temple University, published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2023, found that when we feel good about how we look, our productivity improves.
If Britain wants to get serious, it needs to look serious. And while you're at it, shave off the beard and cover up all those hideous tattoos.