ZEENAT MOORAD: The great office dress-down
To cater to its younger workers and ones they’re trying to recruit, Goldman Sachs has instituted a firm-wide flexible dress code
History will show that dress codes in the banking sector have always been steeped in tradition. So to keep this foremost in mind when joining one of the bastions of Wall Street or their European counterparts was not to stray too far from the norm. Blending in was an unwritten rule. Consider this attire-related passage from Charles D Ellis’s book, The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs. "Regardless of the temperature we were expected to keep our suit jackets on year-round. Suits were woollen: That was the Goldman Sachs way," said John C Whitehead, who worked at Goldman for 38 years, until the 1980s, when he joined the Reagan administration. He goes on to recall how he complied with these rules for most of his first year at the firm. "When I started to roast in midsummer, I thought I might branch out sartorially, and I bought myself a lightweight seersucker suit that I thought very handsome. The next morning, I felt quite snappy as I passed through the Goldman Sachs entrance and...
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