Or maybe by their 40s-60s they have lost all interest in what 25yos, tee-shirted or not, think about their attire. They have seen the fashion wheel spin more than once, and are no longer compelled by it.

(Source: upper 60s, go into the office mostly because a) it's not far, b) my office setup is a bit better, c) I don't want to wake my wife with Zoom calls. I do have some tailored shirts but seldom wear them.)

> maybe by their 40s-60s they have lost all interest in what 25yos

Its not about the fashion, its about looking put together. Its signaling that you care. Of course, there's the article which says that people who made it can stop signaling, so maybe that's you.

There are a lot of people who think signalling you care [about fashion, to be clear] is somehow essential, and that to not care about fashion is to show you don't care about life, or about yourself...

Sorry, no. There's nothing wrong with me for not putting effort into what aesthetic "signals" I'm sending, because there is no true signal. It's noise. If someone's unclean, that's one thing, because cleanliness matters to health. Fashion does not.

Arguments that fashion matters are all circular, which tells you something. (It matters because people think it matters, and is therefore worth taking seriously!)

Filtering out snobs just sounds like a bonus.

You have little nothing to offer people who have been in the field decades more than you. They don't care what signal they're broadcasting to you.

This.

Don Draper "I don't think about you at all" elevator meme in real life.

Originally a Coco Chanel quote: "I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all."

Doreen dropping the knowledge. I just learned another fun Coco Chanel quote: "Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger."

Little known fact: before he was Pied Piper's cool attorney in Silicon Valley, but after his first job at a Superstore, Ron LaFlamme lived in NYC where he was told that he "wasn't thought about at all" by Don Draper. https://youtu.be/LlOSdRMSG_k

Fashion is LITERALLY what you just defined.

If you want to look put together, put your body together first. Clothes are a cheap signal, one that many older people have given up caring about because clothes and appearance are less relevant at their age. And genuinely fit people look good in almost anything.

You can tailor your slacks and shirts too, and it's pretty cheap. It will make you look a lot better than what most people expect if you're the type to dress business casual. That is, if you care.

Suits are very expensive to tailor by comparison.

I’d be careful making assumptions about a group of people like you’ve done here. I’m not quite old enough to be in the “dad professional class”, but I’ve been around long enough to have worked with plenty of people who are. In my experience, the people who dress “like shit in ill-fitting [overly professional button downs and slacks]” have been dressing like that for at least the last 20 years, and that it was common (at least in IT/development) to dress like that.

Tech workers dressing casually at the office is only a (relevantly) recent phenomenon. Working from home, for a lot of people, is even more recent.

You’ve made a lot of assumptions, and I would consider that this group of people are just defaulting back to what they’re used to, rather than “avoid their wife and collect a salary”.

I don’t know where you work, what industry, or the demographics of who works there, but if “people [who work there] don’t always take them seriously”, and it’s based on older people dressing like older people, then there is a culture problem.

If people like that dressed like you, you'd probably be laughing at them even harder and sending around the Steve Buscemi "how do you do, fellow kids?" meme in the group chat.

The problem is with you, I'm afraid.

> There’s a running joke in my circle about the “dad professional class”. People who are older (40-60s)

I fit this demographic.

> and go to the office in a remote-work-accepting world mostly because they seem to want to leave their family at home.

There’s some truth to this, though I’ve avoiding coming in. It’s not about escaping the family but just a change of scenery.

> They all dress like shit in ill-fitting clothes, but because they’re older than the “office casual” dress code, they tend to dress in overly professional button downs and slacks.

I have a reasonable taste in fashion, but my cost-conscious self doesn’t allow it.

Age also forces a more conservative style and colors; and it says I’m sacrificing for the kids.

> “The business attire that look out of place in tech next to a 25yo in a tee shirt.

Business attire is like a uniform. You don’t need to spend a lot to look presentable.

> They don’t seem to know people don’t always take them seriously,

Is this a bad thing?

> and think “they’re not here to [change the world/be the best/rise in the ranks/etc], they’re here to avoid their wife and collect a salary”.

Rise in the ranks?

There’s nothing wrong with working to live. You get my best for 8 to 9 hours.

We live in a world where “leadership” is valued, and everything else is devalued. For engineers, this is purgatory.

Like, it’s a huge mental and emotional burden and I’d gladly take a 1/3 paycut to be an IC; except nobody else really wants it.

> They don’t seem to know people don’t always take them seriously

Because of their clothing? All other things being equal, of what possible objective value could fashion conformity hold?

I think the idea you should get your clothes tailored is just foreign to them. Uniqlo is the only brand that offers it in the US at mall clothes prices.

Agism, not cool.

Youths are like that. He'll learn better over time, but by then a new gaggle of pretentious younglings will be making fun of him for not wearing fruit replicas on his head, or something similar.

I've been reading Ubik by Phillip K. Dick. He hammers this point home frequently, with hilarity.