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Fashion Jury Tells Lawyers “No Tramp Stamps”

by Megan Baldwin | 3:20 pm, April 13th, 2010


File this one under things we wish we could have seen: last week the Chicago Bar Association held a “What Not to Wear” fashion show in order to “educate” lawyers about proper modes of professional dress. Wait, just a minute. Does that mean lawyers don’t prance around with their Chihuahuas in tiny pink pill-box hats and Prada mary-janes à la Elle Woods?

According to this panel of legal eagles, female lawyers should avoid buying suits at Express, exposing bra straps or bending over at the pastry table, lest you expose a “tramp stamp” in the middle of your cheese-filled danish-eating.  ”Ladies, have some respect for yourselves,” said one expert. “There are a lot of married men at law firms and you do not want to tempt them.” Right. Because nothing says I’m a sexy seductress like tats, polyester, and a big, old jelly crawler.

So, if Express is out, what is an aspirant attorney — who isn’t intent on stealing anyone’s husband — to wear? If you’re aiming to be taken seriously, the jury says, the more homely, conservative, and tasteless the better. Think: Mother Superior with the requisite touch of Little House of the Prairie — we’re not sure, but we think exposed ankle is allowed.

If you’re in doubt, yield to a flyer passed out at the event: “This is not the time for self-expression, flamboyance, or eccentricity.”

Reason number 157 why I didn’t go to law school.

Related:

Fashion Dos and Don’ts From the Windy City [Above The Law]

Via Jezebel.



  • kathy kitt

    What year is it?

  • ice queen

    Two words, OK maybe three: CJ Craig. I know she was press secretary of the fictional Bartlett White House, but her fashion sense was impeccable and a good guide for anyone in the professional sector.

  • ChicoStylist

    Legally out of fashion.

  • jsaenz

    “This is not the time for self-expression, flamboyance, or eccentricity” I have to totally disagree on that one. I think that historically there has not been a better time for being able to express ourselves. Specially on the way women dress. I find it difficult to think that the we will find the solution agains husbands cheating on their wives by dressing women (or just lawyers) more conservatively. The question of wether a man would cheat on his wife is a thing of principles and moral. Is it the fault of the woman who expresses herself through fashion? or the man who is not taking his wedding vows seriously? Its like saying that its the fault of raped women that they got attacked because they dressed provocatively. Someone who is ready to cheat doesn’t necessarily has to do it with a lawyer, if he has such low moral he will find who to cheat with elsewhere. Where could this principle take us then? Would we have all women with all sorts of jobs covering themselves up just so that men don’t find themselves tempted?  I find the concept on this article disturbing. 

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