Is the Don Draper look dead? How adland dresses for business success today
As part of The Drum’s Fashion & Beauty Focus, this week’s installment of Agency Advice asks agency leaders if they still enforce a dress code. Plus, we check out some of the latest looks from adland.
When this marketing journalist first began visiting agencies in 1998, pressed white shirts, yellow power ties and boring blue blazers with gold buttons were all the rage. Not so much in creative departments, where creatives were always afforded more latitude when it came to their attire, but in the office, from the MD down to the account executives, smart business suits, skirts, blouses and ties were very much de rigueur.
Not any more. When was the last time you encountered a yellow power tie in an agency? So, as The Drum focuses on fashion, we started asking – do dress codes still exist anywhere in agencyland? Do agency bosses still insist on smart casual for business meetings and pitches, or do they prefer that their people express themselves? Judge for yourself.
Louisa O’Connor, MD, Seen Presents: “We work in a creative industry – diversity of person, diversity of thought equals diversity of creative and that’s what keeps things fresh. If I hired replicas of me, our work would soon become stale. We have goths, people with tattoos, mods, people who take inspo from the 50s… I love coming into our office and seeing the eclectic mix of people.
“For me, I don’t care what you look like, I care what comes out of your brain and out of your mouth and I think our clients respect that too, as long as we are respectful in how we look and do our job well. We have so many fashion-conscious people in our team it would be difficult to pick just one, but I think designer Jan Walsh and project manager Grace Romero (pictured above) represent our policies the most.”