A pain in the neck?

It used to be so simple for men. Come rain or shine, hail or heatwave, for work, you were expected to wear pretty much the same uniform of suit and tie. But things are changing. Now polo shirts are as common as pinstripes in the City and Canary Wharf, and even civil servants and the Japanese salaryman are throwing their ties, if not their caution, to the wind.

Neither has the world of construction and property escaped the changes. Though it is typically conservative-with-a-small-c, even staunch tie-wearers such as CITB-ConstructionSkills chairman Sir Michael Latham concede that exceptions can be made “if your office is 31°C and there’s no air-conditioning”. Where once men would sweat it out, the modern man now finds himself navigating a maze of unspoken rules and expectations governing whether or not he can get away with an open-neck shirt. What is clear is that for such a small and frankly peculiar piece of fabric, ties, or their absence, carry enormous weight in our dealings with other people.

Rebels vs conformists

As a statement of the obvious, whether or not you can get away with deviating from the accepted uniform depends on who you are and where you’re going. For dedicated tie-wearer and architect Robert Adam, it’s not about what you want to wear, it’s all about playing it safe. “You never know who you’re going to meet. It might be someone who is going to be concerned if I don’t wear a tie, but I don’t think anyone will think less of me for wearing one.”

Rob Smith, senior partner at quantity surveyor Davis Langdon, chooses his neck gear depending on who he’s meeting. “There are clients who even the bravest of my colleagues will put a tie on for,” he says. “People are taken on face value - you’ve got to respect people’s standards and if you don’t, they won’t respect you.”

But this is where it gets more complicated. RIBA president-elect Jack Pringle says he’s worn ties for meetings with his more staid clients only to find them disappointed. “Not all clients want architects to turn up looking like accountants. They’re hiring you as a designer - they find it quite reassuring if you don’t turn up looking like a lawyer.” Architects, of course, are a special case in the construction industry - it can be in their interests to break with convention and present an aura of originality. It is probably fair to say that fewer people look for originality in a quantity surveyor.

On the other hand, Steve McGuckin, development director at Land Securities Development, says he’s not bothered. “I don’t judge people by a tie. The world is multinational and cultures are becoming integrated. I’d rather people felt comfortable than dressed up for me. What matters is what they contribute and that they deliver.” He also offers the advice: “No tie is better than a bad tie. Careful in the wardrobe on a dark winter morning …”

Stanhope’s Peter Rogers, probably the construction’s most famous no-tie rebel, believes that turning up suited and booted can be a barrier in some situations. “Management on sites are often dubbed ‘the suits’,” he points out. “It’s easier to communicate with the broad breadth of the industry if you’re not wearing a tie.”

Unfortunately, the decision not to wear a tie can be just the beginning of further wardrobe anxiety. As Adam observes, “not wearing a tie is just another uniform”. And where there’s the expectation of dressing down at work, it can be hard to dress right for a meeting you don’t want your colleagues to know about.

No matter how accepted standards are changing in the office, when you’ve got a job interview, you should still wear a tie, says Lesley Fletcher, a partner at headhunter Thomas Cole Kinder. “I’ve had people come for an interview dressed down, apologising because they have just come from the office.” This isn’t necessarily a problem when you’re meeting a recruitment consultant, she says, but “I’m the gatekeeper. When they’re meeting the prospective employer, I’ll suggest they find some way round it”.

Power dressing

Perhaps, though, this is more indicative of another, and perhaps the greatest, factor in the tie debate: status. As Lesley Fletcher points out, “It’s all about power. In some senior positions, you can dress how you like.” Once you’ve reached a certain pinnacle, your reputation is assured and you don’t have to care what anyone thinks. You can strut around in your dressing-gown if you feel like it. And you don’t have to go for job interviews.

Then again, even the big cats of construction still have to dress up sometimes. Investors, for example, are by definition risk-averse and this doesn’t stop at sartorial preferences. Stephen Rawlinson, of City analyst Arbuthnot, says: “If someone came to a formal business meeting without a tie, I would wonder what message they were trying to give me. The point of a tie is that it’s safe. Clothes send out a message. If you don’t want your clothes to give a message – if you want your words to do that – wear conventional clothes.” It seems that however far standards – and collars – loosen, some rules will always apply.