I’m sorry, but you can’t wear shorts in the office. Just can’t do it. Sure, the temperature outside might still be shooting through the roof, and the A.C. might be on the blink, but you can’t come to work looking like you’re off to a cookout. Can’t come to work looking as though you beg for change in your lunch break, moonlight as a courier, or play Padel on Zoom calls.
In London, I edited GQ for 20 years, and I took a very dim view of the men who decided that it was hot enough outside to wear shorts to work. The only man I allowed to not wear trousers was our sports editor, as he was always running off (often quite literally) to meet people of a sporting nature, often in gyms, velodromes, and soccer arenas. He liked looking the part, and I liked him looking the part.
But let me tell you, he was an exception.
No, wearing shorts to work simply says you’re not serious about your job, not serious about the way you look, and not serious about your prospects. Of course, you could be the kind of guy who owns the shop, the company, or the private island; you could be a Silicon Valley wallah, or you could even be Richard Branson, where your modus operandi is to shout extremely loudly about what a super-cool, relaxed dude you are.
But you’re still wearing shorts in a built-up area, and in the grand scheme of things, the people who work for you will start wondering why you persist in coming to work dressed as a child. I don’t care that you just swapped your A.I. start-up for Guadeloupe; you still look like a Minion.
So don’t do it. Because it won’t do you any good. One of my best friends was a partner at Goldman Sachs, and he used to enjoy telling new recruits about the guy who got fired on his first day for coming to work wearing a baseball cap. He was even wearing it the right way round!
There are exceptions, as there always are, which is something “creatives” like to exploit. When I was editing The Evening Standard (London’s biggest newspaper), the only man who regularly wore shorts was our art director, a decidedly odd man (he supports Arsenal) who revelled in looking as dishevelled as possible. And he was very good at it, wearing the kind of cycling shorts which looked as though they had been sprayed on. Wearing shorts semaphores the fact you’re working through lunch (you’ve brought sandwiches), working late (you’ve probably brought beer), and intend to spend the next 12 hours with your head stuck in a computer, attempting to invent colours which Apple keep telling you don’t exist. Art directors are also likely to have tattoos, and the wearing of shorts allows them to show the rest of the office (the strait-laced, sensible ones who come to the office dressed as adults) that they have an intricately drawn picture of Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction stencilled on the back of their calf. They also tend to wear short-sleeve shirts (generally speaking, another sartorial office no-no), which gives them the opportunity to show off their densely inked sleeve (in this case, a ludicrously detailed illustration of a suspiciously musclebound 16th-century samurai).
There are some who think that dressing casually in the office means you have Big D*ck Energy, but then I think anyone with BDE is so 2018. And who wants to dress like it’s 2018 when it’s actually 2026? No, being too casual in the office lets everyone know that you don’t have what it takes, that you’d rather be at home, buying crypto and playing with your Maltese. As offices finally recover from Covid, and as places of work gradually get back to five-day-a-week occupancy, the whole idea of spending all day in your pyjamas is going out of fashion (even if they’re made by Derek Rose, and even if your bathrobe is Brunello Cucinelli). Many years ago, Nick Jones, the man who invented Soho House, mandated that men could not wear ties in his establishments. At the time, it was deemed to be an outrageously outré thing to do. But much as I like Nick—having left Soho House, he’s just opened a rather brilliant hotel by the Thames called St. Clement—I think it’s time that men started wearing ties again, started wearing jackets and suits again, and refrained from showing us their knees.
This being a Sunday, I am obviously writing this piece wearing shorts. Navy-blue Ralph Lauren cargo pants, to be exact (matched with a long-sleeved Dolce & Gabbana Carretto-print silk twill shirt, which I think makes me look like an off-duty mandarin). I love wearing shorts, especially cargo pants, invariably worn with a pair of plastic Birkenstocks and Cutler & Gross sunglasses. In fact, I could wear them for the rest of the summer.
But obviously not when I’m behind my desk.
This story was originally published on Robb Report USA.
Photo: LightFieldStudios/GettyImages
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