How hard is it to find garment-unfriendly men’s business wear?
Image by Mark G, CC BY-NC 2.0
I loved Laura’s By Common Consent post How hard is it to find a garment-friendly dress? She filtered through Macy’s online catalog and found the percentage of dresses that would be garment-compatible off the rack. (It’s a low number. Go read her article to see it.)
I wondered what percentage of men’s clothing marketed as business wear or formal attire (i.e. clothing that might be worn to church or a wedding) was not garment compatible. I examined the Macy’s catalog to stay consistent with the market of the other article. I looked at three categories of men’s clothing: pants, suits, and shirts. All numbers are pulled from August 4th/5th.
In the category “Dress Pants” all 185 options looked garment friendly.
There were 431 options in “Suits & Tuxedos”. There was one suit that had been tagged as being “sleeveless”, but whoever tagged that must have been thinking of the vest that goes under the long sleeved jacket. I quickly scrolled through all 431 options (because none of the other filtering options would have eliminated garment appropriateness), but zero choices looked incompatible with men’s garments, assuming they are worn with a dress shirt.
Shirts got a little more complicated. The other article used a definition of garment friendly that required opaque fabric to cover the entire garment. Men’s short sleeve dress shirts are often worn without a tie and with the top button or two undone. A man who opts to wear a crew neck style garment top with the shirt unbuttoned this way may be exposing the neckline of his garment. However, because it is socially acceptable for men to expose the garment neckline in this way, and a man could also opt to wear a different garment style with a lower neckline or button the shirt up all the way, I’m still going to consider these shirts “garment-friendly”. My search found 505 items in the “Dress Shirts” category. I know men sometimes have a problem with garment sleeves poking out of a short sleeved shirt. While it was possible to filter the “Dress Shirts” category by sleeve length, only 20 shirts were labeled “short sleeve” and 26 “long sleeve”, so I looked through all 505 shirts. It looked reasonable to expect the sleeves to cover the garment in every picture where the sleeves were visible. The necklines all seemed fine with the possible exception of two Hawaiian style shirts where it was unclear whether or not it would be possible to button the ironed down collar. Two out of 505 is 0.4%. And it would still be socially acceptable to wear those shirts with the garment showing.
While button down dress shirts are most common at church, sometimes men wear things like polo shirts. Macy’s had 2948 choices. Polo shirts have a wider variety of sleeve length than dress shirts. I asked my husband to judge whether or not each of the first 120 shirts listed could be worn with garments completely covered. He guessed that there were maybe 3 shirts where the garment sleeves would not be covered. Assuming all three would have sleeves that are too short, and assuming that the rest of the polo shirts have a similar fraction of shirts with shorter than average sleeves, 2.5% of the polo shirts would not be garment friendly.
Even if I include all men’s shirts (athletic wear, jerseys, tank tops, undershirts, etc.) and assume that 3% of the short sleeve shirts will show garments, only 7.3% of the total men’s shirts would be “immodest”. Over 90% of all the men’s shirts in the store are garment-ready, and the ones that are not would be easy to sort out simply because if it has sleeves, it’s probably fine.
If we combine the options of dress shirts and polo shirts, 2.2% of the available Sunday shirts at Macy’s might not be able to cover the garment. That means that 97.8% of the shirts and 100% of the pants and suits that a man might buy for church would be compatible with his garments. By comparison, the percentage of garment-compatible dresses was in the single digits. (Really. Go read her numbers.)
Just because that small fraction of available dresses are garment-compatible, it does not mean they fit the woman, or are appropriate for her desired use of the item. Last spring I was looking for a new top or two to refresh my wardrobe. I wanted something short-sleeved and nicer than a plain t-shirt. I had gone to two thrift stores and hadn’t had any luck. When my mother-in-law took the family to Macy’s for shopping, I tried on at least a dozen potentially-garment-covering tops (it can be hard to judge on the hanger just how low the v-neck is, or if the cap sleeves will cover garments). Only three of the shirts fit me, and only one of those was garment-friendly. The color was unspectacular with my skin tone. The fabric was heavy. The sleeves had layers of sweaty ruffles. It might have been a good shirt for wearing in an overly air conditioned office, but it was not a good shirt for wearing outside to enjoy a warm summer day. At this point I had looked for three hours in three stores for a shirt. I decided I was tired of using an immodest amount of time to look for “modest” clothing. I chose to get one of the shirts that was not garment-friendly.
Even though men’s garments and women’s garments cover similar proportions of their bodies, equality is not equity. A man can walk into a store and be assured that practically any dress shirt in his size will fit his body and cover his garments, even without trying it on. A woman may need to spend hours locating a comparable item. Looking at my new shirt, my husband was surprised that it did not cover the garment. He was also concerned that I chose to buy it. He’s a good man. He listened to my shopping experience. He recognized that he has never had a similar experience, and he wouldn’t want to be expected to put in that amount of effort to obtain “appropriate” clothing. He supports my decision. The gendered context in which men and women purchase clothing is very different. Finding garment-friendly clothing is significantly more burdensome for women than it is for men. To reiterate, Laura found the percentage of garment-friendly dresses at Macy’s to be in the single digits. I found the percentage of garment-friendly dress shirts to be in the high nineties. It’s harder to find a “garment-unfriendly” dress shirt than it is to find a “garment-friendly” dress. Impossible beauty standard # 539937: look feminine, but wear underwear that only works consistently with clothing that is similar to a man’s.
