Appropriate Occupational Attire

When should you wear a short sleeve white button-front shirt, a necktie (clip-on is acceptable), and a vinyl penholder?

I’m a big fan of men sporting their trade’s stereotypical professional costume or grooming: e..g, as a dealmaker, Trump is always photographed appropriately dressed in a suit and tie, or in golf attire (a dealmaker’s primary recreational clothes).

Similarly, firemen and relief pitchers traditionally often sport mustaches:

Conversely, that practically everybody who is not at the level of CPA or above has tattoos today is more boring than back when sailors and Marines had tattoos and other occupations never dreamt of it:

Similarly, at my drug store on Ventura Boulevard, over the Hollywood Hills from the Sunset Strip, I used to see skinny, long-haired guys in their sixties or seventies wearing tight black leather pants.

It’s not a look I’d advise for oldsters in general, but this small set wore it with pride and dignity because it signaled to each other: we are professional electric rock guitarists. I played for Zappa, you played for Ozzie.

Once while walking up to the UCLA Graduate School of Management (MBA) building in 1980, I spotted a huge crowd of white guys wearing neckties and short-sleeve shirts with vinyl penholders for their automatic pencils. They were easy to identify because my father dressed like that for each day’s work at Lockheed: they were aerospace engineers:

E.g., Apollo 11 Mission Control:

America has been an aerospace republic since 1903, 122 years ago, 49% of the length of the republic’s 249 years.

With our 250th anniversary coming up, isn’t it about time that we acknowledge that America’s conquest of gravity has been central to our story?

Paywall here.