It was John Fetterman, the Democratic senator for Pennsylvania with a penchant for “unapologetically wearing shorts” while on duty in the Senate, who seemed to have broken the system. Last week, when the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, announced a relaxing of the dress code on the Senate floor, he didn’t mention Fetterman. But nobody was fooled. For weeks, Fetterman has been attracting attention in his baggy shorts, shapeless hoodie and massive, scruffy trainers – and now look what he’s done. Stepping up to provide journalists with the mandatory quote on these sorts of occasions, Republican senator Roger Marshall observed gravely that it was “a sad day in the Senate”.
When questioned on the matter, Fetterman remarked that the clothes, which he started wearing after a spell in hospital for depression earlier this year, made him more comfortable. There’s probably a pandemic hangover at work here, too – and possibly, given the state of the world, some fiddling-while-Rome-burns displacement. Traditionally, the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms would pull up male senators for appearing tieless on the floor, and out of respect they would vote from the doorways. The understanding was that they would be emboldened to take their place alongside colleagues in something more casual – until the Senate voted to reverse the decision on Wednesday evening, bringing this casual interlude to an end.
While it lasted, it fell into the familiar and pleasing category of the slipping-standards-it-wasn’t-like-that-in-my-day outrage, other iterations of which include people wearing jeans to the theatre, going hatless at weddings and running multibillion-dollar companies from inside an oversized hoodie. If there is a single, pivotal influence at work it is the last one: the uniform of the tech industry, where suits have come to be associated with small-minded, non-disruptive thinking, while dorm room sweats and sneakers, or at the very most jeans and a white shirt, signify the visionary.
I find it hard to pick a side in this debate, operating as I am from the disadvantage of working in an industry where formal attire means finding a T-shirt that doesn’t have a stain down the front. And I’ve shifted positions over the years. For example, having once been strongly in favour of school uniforms, the experience of having kids in a US school – one of them sits all day wearing a baseball cap backwards and the other, occasionally, shows up in pyjama bottoms – has conditioned me out of it. British uniform requirements that legislate down to the socks and hair accessories look prissy and pointless in comparison.
I also find myself thinking that definitions of what constitutes formal attire need to change. I have to go to dinner on a fancy ship soon and the dress code stipulates no jeans or sneakers. I’m willing to argue the toss on jeans. But sneakers, come on. This overlooks the sheer breadth of the trainer spectrum, which ranges from Fetterman’s sloppy workout shoes to Virgil Abloh’s Off-White for Nike sneakers that are more expensive and greater works of art, if you want to look at it that way, than what would be considered the more appropriate attire of (in my opinion) dumbass Manolos and their brethren.
Colleagues of Fetterman’s fell into line for or against him largely along partisan lines, although that division wasn’t entirely uniform. It was noted that Josh Hawley, Republican senator for Missouri, rocked up in jeans, boots and no tie last week, an outfit he says he normally wears at the start of the week when he flies in from his home state and was reportedly very happy not to have to change out of.
Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine, meanwhile, joked: “I plan to wear a bikini tomorrow to the Senate floor,” prompting various unsisterly thoughts that had to be immediately quashed. As one of a minority of women in the Senate, there’s a decent feminist point Collins might have made about all this, although, of course, she didn’t; no one looks to Collins – who voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court because he gave her his word he wouldn’t challenge Roe v Wade – to defend the interests of women. The fact remains: had either she or one of her 24 female colleagues pulled a number like Fetterman and turned up, as he himself characterised it, looking like “a slob”, I have a hunch the response might not have been so indulgent and jovial.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
The headline and text of this article were amended on 28 September 2023 to reflect that the US Senate reinstated a formal dress code between the time of the article’s writing and publication.
