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Kingston, RI – March 17, 2023 – The power grid is far from dead. But over the past 100 years, it has gone from essential business attire for men and women to just one of the many choices available today for the high-powered executive or nervous job seeker.
It’s one of the storylines in a new exhibit, “Dressed for Business: A Retrospective of Suits and Beyond (1923-2023),” taking over the Textile Gallery of Rhode Island starting Thursday, March 23. Presented by the Department of Textiles, Fashion Marketing and Design, the exhibition coincides with the College of Business 100’s well-tailored wardrobe.Th It also features costumes from the university’s historic textile and clothing collection.
“The idea of dressing as a business person – especially a man – has changed as society has changed,” said Susan Jerome, collection manager who presented the exhibition with Associate Professor Rebecca Kelly. “The sport coat was replaced by the tie three-piece suit in the 1970s. Now in the year In 2023, people are a bit confused between what is normal and what is appropriate to wear in business and business settings. We live in a more ordinary world.
The exhibition explores the direction of business clothing – from the three-piece suit of the early 1900s, including shirt, jacket and trousers, to the modular, sport coat and trousers introduced in the 1970s, to the casual, almost formal attire of today.
The exhibition showcases 13 men’s and women’s business suits and a range of accessories – ties, shirts, shirts and shoes – to showcase the evolution of business attire. Adding to the story are several posters that combine vintage photos of URI with contemporary fashion ads from several decades ago.
“It was fun going through the yearbooks,” Jerome said. In the 1920s, all these men are sitting around in their dark suits and ties and you start to see women coming into these groups. Then in the 60’s and 70’s all hell broke loose and the concepts of professional dress became less and less.
“I think that’s a challenge for young people trying to break into the business and interviewing for the first time,” Kelly said. “There is a lot of stress because the ‘dress for success’ guidelines of the past are no longer hard and fast rules. I laughed at how much has changed in such a short time.
For the exhibition, the story begins several decades ago – it was opened in the 1820s with a man-cut tailcoat. The tailcoat — seen with a tie, the forerunner of the modern tie — is “probably the root of the modern suit,” says Kelly. “In the year It was around that time in the 1820s that you started seeing those three types of jacket, vest and breach. But very quickly, men are starting to find themselves wearing trousers more and more for business.
With the clothes on display, the norm goes from formal to casual. As women entered the business world, their early business attire mirrored that of men. Men’s wool lapels flourish (especially in the 1930s and 40s) and then decline. Fine fabrics, fine tailoring and beautiful details give way to synthetic threads.
Like everything else, fashions are affected by the political, economic and social changes of the time, says Jerome. And in the 1940s and 50s, men’s and women’s clothing showed influences from the Second World War era.
In the 1940s, women were cut off from the war, which was associated with the famous bag. The suit was one of two donated by a man his aunt used to be a retail buyer at the old Gladings and Cherry & Webb department stores, Jerome said.
In the year With societal changes in the 1960s and 70s, URI yearbooks feature the absence of dress code, which was a staple two decades ago. “Nobody’s wearing a suit and there’s a lot of facial hair,” Jerome said. “If you see a group of people and one person is wearing a suit, it’s the professor.”
“I think formality is going to last a little longer with women’s clothing,” adds Kelly. “High-powered women in these business areas feel that clothing is part of their arsenal to get into this world.”
Today, “dressed for business” can mean different things to different professionals. The technology boom of the 1990s and 2000s — and the COVID-19 pandemic, which moved many jobs online — had an impact, Kelly said.
“If you think about someone like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, some of the most powerful people in the world go to work in a hoodie or a Patagonia vest and jeans and sneakers.” she says. “There’s a lot of confusion about this old idea of a power suit. Some people are drawn to it and other people reject it.
Jerome says one surprise she and Kelly found when preparing the exhibit was the lack of menswear in the URI collection. “Women remain clothing consumers and the collection is very heavy on women’s clothing,” she says. “We need to do more to collect menswear, accessories and especially shirts to show the full range of clothing from different decades and centuries.”
An opening night event will be held on Thursday, March 23, at 6 p.m. Linda Welters, professor and director of the Textiles and Clothing Collection, will speak in Queen’s Hall on the topic of “Success for Success,” the relationship between clothing that fueled the 1970s movement and one’s success in business and personal life. . There will also be a visit to the exhibition and an opportunity to ask questions.
The exhibition will be on display until December at the Textile Gallery on the first floor of Queen’s Hall, 55 Lower College Road. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
URI College of Business
The College of Business was founded in 1923 by Howard Edwards, then president of Rhode Island State College, as a leader in business education, research and promotion in Rhode Island. Accredited by the Association of Advanced College Business Schools, the college today has more than 2,300 undergraduate and nearly 350 graduate students in 10 undergraduate programs, nine graduate programs, and three Ph.D. Specialization.
As it turns 100, the college continues to renew its offerings. New courses focused on diversity, social entrepreneurship and innovation, and artificial intelligence have been added to the undergraduate curriculum. The college has launched new programs that keep pace with the times: a Doctorate in Business Administration for professionals and a FinTech Bachelor’s degree in financial technologies.
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