Fashion, Politics, United Kingdom / Great Britain

The Leather-Trousered Philanthropists

Behold the genuine demise of common sense decision making.

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“Common Sense is Genius Dressed in its working clothes.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There has been a lot to focus on in global politics over the last six to twelve months, but by far my favourite reignited debate has been the one over the wearing of trousers in various contexts. The trouser, so it seems, is the chosen tool of a revolution from Devonshire Schools to Salt Lake City churches.

The UK experienced a short-lived heat wave a couple of weeks ago, with temperatures in some parts surging to thirty two degrees. If you have any experience of British culture, you will know that it’s mandatory to obsess over the weather. Frustratingly, there’s very little consistency to it, and a tendency for hyperbole around meteorological extremities. On a hot day, an urgent water shortage announcement will generally be coupled with a stark warning from our broadcaster about climate change, prompting hot and bothered Brits to begin their working days rummaging through their bins to make sure the paper and plastic recycling is not co-mingled. Unhelpfully, the UK’s urban fox community, aided by a standard-issue garbage collection truck with mechanical Parkinson’s disease, ensures that all efforts on waste separation are entirely eroded in any case.

One of the aforementioned hot days in June prompted a few sweaty school boys in Devon to ask their head teacher if they might don a pair of shorts in place of the uniform trousers. The case was made that, in light of the school girls being able to bare their legs in skirts, the boys ought to be given an equal opportunity at coolness. As the school’s uniform list did not contain a checkbox for shorts, this was rebuffed, with a passing satirical comment that the boys could wear a skirt like the girls if they wished. The arrival of more than a dozen tartan-kilted teen boys the next day made the national news and opened the floor for questions about common sense. In particular it made me question how the Scots, with weather that could frighten an Eskimo, became the muse for the kilt anyway.

Not more than a week after the young male social reformers in Devon made a stand against trouser wearing, an ironic twist of reporting signalled a change in trouser policy at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the Salt Lake City headquarters implemented a new regime allowing female staff to wear trousers to work. (Sadly nothing was said about the Mormon men being encouraged to wear kilts to work.)

The danger of women swaggering about in trousers must have also terrified the French for many years, since they repealed a 200-year-old legal ban on women wearing them only in 2013. Up until then, although the law was not actively enforced, a woman technically needed permission from the local police to “dress like a man”.

The French it seems are, in fact, light years ahead of the archaic airline industry, which just last year saw female members of the British Airways Mixed Fleet crew be granted the right to make a request to wear trousers. The two-year legal battle was fought by the union for British Airways staff, which cited pro-trouser, common-sense rationales such as low cabin temperatures, increased risk of exposure to the Zika virus and malaria, and the safety aspects of nylon tights in the case of a fire. British Airways has been by no means alone in its resistance to women in pants. In 2013, Seoul-based Asiana Airlines was challenged for the same reason, and it might be inferred from the response that the Korean cabin crew’s Tibia and Fibia display is up there with TV size and abundance of Tanqueray when decisions about carrier choice are made by customers.

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None of these incidences have yet overshadowed one of my highlights of 2016, which was the decision of the British prime minister, Theresa May, to appear in a photo shoot just before Christmas in $1300 chocolate-brown leather flares. It prompted a furious outcry from a fellow conservative Member of Parliament, Nicky Morgan, who (rather ironically) served between 2014-2016 as Minister for Women and Equalities. Morgan, who is the MP for Loughborough, suggested that she could not show her face in Loughborough market as a result of the prime minister’s overpriced-trouser crime. I surmised that this was a befitting end to 2016, where deluded politicians thought that the Loughborough residents’ main concern about the Country related to the cost of Mrs. May’s aesthetically heinous trousers.

What the whole trouser furore has highlighted principally is the genuine demise of common sense decision making. Uniforms and high dress standards can be a positive attribute in certain institutions and businesses, and there is a time and a place for being respectful of a dress code. When I read, however, that a school turned away children involved in the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in Kensington, London a few weeks ago because they didn’t have their uniforms, which had presumably perished in the disaster that killed so many of its residents and was London’s worst fire since World War II, it made me wonder if we’ve secretly been invaded by Decepticons.

A glimmer of hope for the reincarnation of sense beamed across the British horse racing scene during Royal Ascot this June, when organisers tipped their Top Hats to the exceptional weather and allowed the sweltering male inhabitants of the exclusive Royal Enclosure to remove their jackets. Perhaps the Ascot approach will inspire other stiff institutions to relax rules on dress when it becomes appropriate. Meanwhile, we can embrace the bold spirit of our Exeter-based schoolboy rebels in their insurgent attitude to senseless bureaucracy.

Jayne BackettJayne Backett is a partner at Fieldfisher LLP in London specializing in banking transactions, with a particular focus on real estate financing. Fieldfisher is a 600-lawyer European law firm, with a first-class reputation in a vast number of sectors, specifically, financial institutions, funds, technology and fintech, retail, hotels and leisure, and health care. Jayne has a depth of experience in mentoring and training junior lawyers and has a passion for bringing discussions on diversity in law to the forefront. She can be reached by email at jbackett@hotmail.com, and you can follow her on Twitter: @JayneBackett.

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