December 9, 2011
Dress Code for Architects
What do you think of when you think of an architect’s uniform?
In school I had a professor, albeit one of the kindest human beings ever to step foot on earth, who wore the same exact uniform day in and day out for all five years that I’ve known him. Khaki pants, white collared button down starchy shirt, round frameless glasses and some of the saddest shoes you’ve ever laid eyes on. At the end of our second semester some fellow students and I had the privilege to go over to his house and were treated to a dinner prepared by said professor. Though the gesture alone should have been my sole focus I could only think of one thing: Hell or high water I was going to take a peak inside his closet. After arriving, it took all of 5 minutes to figure out the layout of his house.
During the second course of dinner, lasagna, I kindly excused myself from the table where we all gathered and asked where the restroom was, though I already knew. I faked my way past the bathroom and into his bedroom where his closet door was open. In all its glory there it was: a sea of starched cotton white button down shirts, followed by a row of worn khaki pants in the same shade of taupe, next to one pair of sad looking brown shoes. Nothing more, nothing less.
Here are some architects with the more traditional ‘costume’:
Seems like the uniform has shaped up to look something like this:
Round glasses, black turtleneck, black pants, bad hair, and a drab personality. If that worked for Le Corbusier it should work for the other throngs of architects, right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong. Styling ourselves, like designing our homes, is so important to us because it expresses something to the universe about who we are, what message we are sending, and what we think of good design. So, we say nix the uniform and always go with structured, sophisticated, classic, and clean lines both in clothing and home design.