By Ben Widdicombe
Everett Collection Hi, Peter. What’s happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.
Tough times make for tough fashion choices, but none more difficult than what to wear on the day you get the chop. Sometimes it can be an excuse for a fashion moment — like Marie Antoinette, who famously wore all white to the guillotine. (Contemporaries noted her ramrod bearing and hair turned snowy white from stress, like a stately Carmen del’Orifice on a one-way trip off the end of the catwalk.) Others, like the recently terminated Village Voice fashion writer Lynn Yaeger, feel that they missed their chance to make a sartorial exit statement.“With advanced warning, I could have done an outfit,” she told a reporter from the New York Observer after parting from her employer of 30 years. “For me, a shredded Comme des Garçons look or a more sober gothic nun sort of thing would have been more appropriate.”
Only a few short years ago, bright young things all over the country were talking about what to wear to the revolution. Dot-com dollars made the college-slacker look positively aspirational: even middle-aged executives were slouching into the office in jeans and a hoodie, trying to look like they belonged to some Seattle frat house with the initials I.P.O.
These days, it’s all about what to wear to the execution. Somehow those scuffed Chucks don’t seem so ironic if your employment trajectory might actually include working at Foot Locker.
The perfect termination outfit should feature professionalism and employability as the top note, but with accents of confidence and an aftertaste that leaving the premises means moving on up. A sober suit with a bright shirt is perfect.
It is also important, when anticipating bad news, not to wear a favorite piece of clothing, which will forever be associated with an unpleasant memory. Is there a pair of shoes in the back of your closet, still brand new after a year because they never quite fit? Today’s their day to shine.
I have some personal experience with this particular fashion challenge. In mid-January my contract with a national magazine was due for renewal, and amid sharp cutbacks I had no illusions that I would be kept on board.
That day I decided to steer a middle course between Yaeger and the ill-fated Queen of France: nothing too funereal, but maybe not carefree winter white, either. For me that was a 10-year-old Brooks Brothers charcoal suit, which for all its fussing and tailoring has never hung quite right. (Also — pleated trousers! What was I thinking?) But it is a fine suit to be fired in, as well as for court dates and weddings you don’t really want to be at. An optimistic blue Dolce & Gabbana shirt completed the ensemble.
Of course, things have a way of turning out not quite as expected.
As I had imagined it, I would get the bad news in person after making a work-related call at the midtown studios of Fox News Channel. But at 1 p.m., just after I had entered a restroom in the News Corporation building, my phone rang. I was terminated in a brief, cordial chat with my editor. It was only a minute later, after I had hung up the phone, that I thought to mumble to myself alone in the men’s room, “But what did you think of the suit?”
Let us know, in the comments section below, what you would wear to cause a termination sensation. Would you get suited to get booted, or take a more casually disdainful approach?
<http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/youre-fired-but-your-outfits-great/?ex=1249275600&en=fc3e07e57f05ceb0&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=TM-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M080-ROS-0209-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click>
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