Evolution of Suits and Briefcases in the Workplace

If you've worked in a corporate environment over the past few decades you will recollect what I will be talking about. If you haven't then this should be educational and entertaining for you.

Suits

So in this post I just want to talk about some changes in apparel over the past few decades, I cannot provide dates because changes are gradual so I will be giving you rough timelines. First I want to take a look at suits. Suits were mandatory for businessmen back in the 50's, 60's, mid 70's, then in the late 70's it became more common for businessmen to wear a colorful suit (lime green jacket with a yellow tie) and a mustache. I think this is interesting because it seems to reflect the popular culture of the time in North American with the flashy colors, more laid back attitude and abstract approaches. Into the 80's suits switched back to neutral colors but this seems to have been the beginning of dress codes that did not require jackets and in many cases no tie either. This style continued into the 90's and most of the 2000's. But these days I've noticed more and more businesspeople are switching back to full suits including the coat. I think it is interesting how the styles change with such regularity and what will change within the next few years. Will businesses go back to everyone wearing a full suit, dress shirt or something else entirely?

Briefcase

Second, I want to talk about the evolution of briefcases in the workplace. Everyone can picture the old-timely businessman walking into work with a leather bound briefcase packed with folders and documents. But what happened to briefcases? The answer is, they have been replaced. The way I see it is as technology advances, the environment that surrounds them must change as well in order to compliment the technology as best it can. So with this in mind you probably have an idea of what happened to briefcases. These days everything is digital, email, documents, planners, it is all accessible through our computers and more recently the advances in smartphones and tablet devices. So these days there is no need to carry stacks of paper that are all on your USB flash drive which weighs only 6 grams. So in many ways the briefcase has been replaced by the laptop bag, they can be carried over the shoulder so weight is distributed evenly amongst the body and no need to put it down and forget it somewhere. What do you think the future has in store for how people transport their documents and possessions?