Dress code

(noun)

Dress codes are written and, more often, unwritten rules with regard to clothing. Like other aspects of human physical appearance, clothing has a social significance, with different rules and expectations being valid depending on circumstance and occasion.

Related Terms

Examples of Dress code in the following topics:

  • Appearance: Dress and Posture

    • Appropriate dress changes based on the occasion and has changed over history.
    • Dress codes have built-in rules about the message sent by what a person wears and how they wear it.
    • Dress should be comfortable without looking overdressed.
    • Dress for the occasion.
    • Consider what dress is appropriate for the event and the culture of the audience.

  • Core Culture

    • , the colors and shapes used in the logo, the general dress code, etc.
    • Diagram of Schein's organizational behavior model, which depicts the three central components of an organization's culture: artifacts (visual symbols such as office dress code), values (company goals and standards), and assumptions (implicit, unacknowledged standards or biases).

  • Conceptual Thought

    • The inputs by people who are hired especially for their exceptional conceptual skills often influence the decision-making process in an organization, be it about a simple thing like a change in the employees dress code, to something as big as a revamped advertising campaign for a product.

  • Delivering the Speech

    • Details like how you dress, enunciate, and use body language can be just as important as what you say.
    • It's imperative to know the dress code for the event at which you're speaking.
    • In a business setting, men should wear a button-down shirt and dress pants and shoes; depending on how formal the business setting, this may also include a suit jacket and tie.
    • Women should wear a dress, dress pants or skirt with a button-down top, blazer, blouse or nice sweater.

  • Peer Groups

    • As members of peer groups interconnect, and agree, a normative code arises.
    • This normative code can become very rigid deciding group behavior and dress.
    • Peer group individuality is increased by normative codes, and intergroup conflict.
    • Member deviation from the strict normative code can lead to rejection from the group.

  • Group Dynamics

    • Drawing on such information, people can then sort themselves into various groups, which may then establish specific codes of conduct and dress for members.
    • Second, group members must establish a set of codes or symbolic signals that allow people to tell others they are a member of a group.
    • After you defined yourself as a group member, you would then need to adopt some or all of these identity codes so others believe you are a member.
    • By adopting these identity codes correctly in the presence of other group members, you would gain affirmation wherein existing group members approve of your performance of these identity codes and welcome you into the group (in some cases, there may even be a formal ceremony where you profess your membership and other group members affirm that profession).
    • Finally, you will begin to notice that other group members (and over time you will do this to) will check on you to make sure you are doing the identity codes properly.

  • Gender Identity in Everyday Life

    • These people generally dress according to how they feel but do not make an drastic change within their sexual organs.
    • They are biologically male, but dress and behave in a manner that Polynesians typically consider female.
    • The xanith are male, homosexual prostitutes whose dressing is male, featuring pastel colors rather than the white clothes traditionally worn by men, but their mannerisms are coded as female.

  • The Symbolic Nature of Culture

    • Think, for example, of the way you dress and what it means to other people.
    • The way you dress could symbolically communicate to others that you care about academics or that you are a fan of your school's football team, or it might communicate that you have adopted an anarchist philosophy or are a fan of punk music.
    • The belief that culture is symbolically coded and can, therefore, be taught from one person to another, means that cultures, although bounded, can change.
    • Relate the idea that culture is symbolically coded to arguments about the dynamism of cultures

  • Meeting In Person (Conferences, Hackfests, Code-a-Thons, Code Sprints, Retreats)

  • Norms and Sanctions

    • Norms can be explicit (such as laws) or implicit (such as codes of polite behavior).
    • While it is usually social convention to show up in some manner of (usually professional) dress to a job interview, this is most likely not the case for someone interviewing to be a nude model.
    • Formal deviance, or the violation of legal codes, results in criminal action initiated by the state.