Should There Be a Specific Dress Code for Architects?

Text : Nor Azua Ruslan

[ Dressing Architecture : Colour, Style & Fashion ]

In Relation With Architects and Clothing

Original works submitted to the Manchester School of Architecture for the Bachelor of Architecture dated April 2009. Received a commendation in Summer 2010.

8.0] Conclusion:

Should There Be a Specific Dress Code for Architects?

Image Source : vms3d.com

No, there’s no need for specific dress code for architects. There’s no direct correlation between architects and their works.  Architects are creative creatures and each architect finds his/her inspiration differently.  That is where their attire might affect their productivity.  Depending on what the architect wants to achieve on a given day, he/she will dress in a way that will help him/her accomplish those tasks.

What does matters is of what they deliver in their design to the public. It does not matter how appealing they dress up, but it does matter how appealing their building. We find that the clothes is just external fabric of the body, but the ideas that turn up in their design are something more precious in architectural service. Often, people expect architects to dress creatively because architects are creative profession. However, being creative in your works is worth that being creative in how you’re going to match your trousers and shirt, your skirt and top and not even your additional jewellery or accessories.

I do not have specific architect’s attire but I do like colours.  I like colours in general and I like orange most.  Colour coordination is utmost important (Shirt, pants, socks, shoes and watches… and possibly notebook, bags) and I will feel most calm, comfortable and productive if I know my attire is colour coordinated.  Most of the time, I prefer dark coloured pants. If you are talking about shirt-pants-shoes, most probably it must…1) Light-dark-dark or 2) Light -Dark-Light or 3) Dark-Dark-Dark and maybe once in a while 4) Light-Light-Light.13

Clothing does not make us different from other profession. What we do in each individual profession is the difference.  But often, the way architects dress up is more recognizable than others. Eventough I do not have a statistic to back this up, but those who dress conservatively tend to design structures the same way.  Those who dare to dress differently and dare to stand out in a crowd will have the same approach towards designing buildings.

Architects are also generally known to have a different take on dress code, thus, we can get away wearing almost anything.  General perception is that creative people dress creatively.13

Architect’s clothing is different from other professions because part of it is an image of being an architect or designer and often as a differentiating factor. Moreover, the public seem to expect the architect to dress uniquely as unique as their design tend to be. However, it does not really matters as long as architects have a little bit sense of style and know how to dress up comfortably, which is more important in order to complete their task as an architect. In the past, Richard Rogers wears multi coloured clothing and several years back, architects liked to wear bow-ties. However, none of these important because what we do in each individual profession is the difference. Therefore, there shouldn’t be any specific dress code for architect, because we have enough problems to work on.

Architects are advised to be naturally presentable and comfortable without overdo, but their designs should be more unique and sometime a little bit overdo, but must be practical at the same time. That is why Loo See Chew said I can wear anything I want on my first experience in architect’s company few years back; because she knew that her boss expected more than that.

[O]ne finds that Frank Lloyd Wright’s aphoristic chant----

I’ll live

As I’ll die

As I am!

No slave of fashion or sham

----continues to reverberate through architecture schools and offices, particularly in America. Why would architecture be constructed as being immune to the vicissitudes of fashion? First, because architectural production has for so long been occluded by the phantom of the zeitgeist, most Architects continue to be lulled by Wright’s insistent mantra. And second, because the cost and scale of architectural works themselves has traditionally caused architecture to be seen as being exempt from any fashion system.[21]

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13 Interview between author and Zaini Mufti (Feb 2009)

[21] Val K. (1994) In Architecture: Observing the Mechanism of Fashion in fashion. In Deborah F. Architecture, in Fashion. Princeton Architectural Press: New York, p 151

From KUL-MAN

Text : Nor Azua Ruslan

[ Dressing Architecture : Colour, Style & Fashion ]

In Relation With Architects and Clothing

Original works submitted to the Manchester School of Architecture for the Bachelor of Architecture dated April 2009. Received a commendation in Summer 2010.

7.0] From KUL-MAN

I would like to introduce my friend, Nursuliana. We met in TRYH when I did my practical training there in 2003.  When we were both graduated, we made the same decision to come back to TRHY and started our career there. As I had explained earlier, TRHY has no specific dress code or special attire which people might labelled as TRHY fashion. Later in 2007, she decided to move to Manchester and she has been offered a job as Junior Architect in Broadway Malyan, one of the architecture companies. I am interested to examine the way she dressed up to work in TRHY, Kuala Lumpur (KUL) to Broadway Malyan, Manchester (MAN).

Knowing her as a young Malay lady, she chose Baju Kurung during her time in TRHY. She always stands up amongst all staff and colleagues as she preferred this unique traditional clothes rather than modern clothing. Yes, she is very unique in her own way and yet she creates her own identity. However, when I asked on her opinion about herself and the way she dressed up to the office, she simply said that she does not have any specific architect’s attire to be exact.

FIG.7.1: Suliana; far from left (TRHY 2004)

I am just being simple and I want to be fast. This is because I had so many other things to do apart from my concern on what to wear to the office. I just have no time to be fashionable. Therefore, I found that Baju Kurung or Kebaya just save me from the hassle to pick clothes to the office. However, if I was assigned to attend a meeting, then only I decided to wear something more presentable.[20]

When she said presentable, it is in a terms that she is actually carry herself as a TRHY representative, therefore she decided to ‘dress to impress’. Of course, when you work with a big labelled architect, you will definitely carry yourself as big-name architect’s staff, which is the most interesting part in your career. I totally do not agree with her because her own unique identity is presentable enough, and there is nothing more you could expect. When she said she has no time to be fashionable, that is not acceptable. This is because she has a sense of colour picking and matching. Suliana loves to match her scarf with her top / dress. I found this is intriguing apart from her being simple and realizes that she is actually has a sense for fashion. She actually did, and she even had this so called Casual Clothing Friday because on Friday, she will pull on her jeans and shirt. She got her own sense of style, didn’t she?

During our interview, she did not agree if architects should have specific dress code or attire. This is because she prefers colours and style varieties which shall create a cheerful working environment. Therefore to her, different clothes and different fashion is acceptable in architect’s profession and architects should have a sense for fashion. But nevertheless, architect should not have a strict guideline on it. It does not matter if architects do not have a deep knowledge in fashion, but having a basic knowledge of colour matching and sense are expected.

She thought the same about herself when public seems to expect architect to dress creatively. Therefore she does not feel that she is fashionable enough. However, she finally agreed that her own unique identity is what portrays herself of being creative by wearing Malay traditional clothes, while other Malay architects chose modern clothing. Yes, Suliana is proud of her culture. That is why she planned to develop her deep interests in Malay traditional house in vernacular architecture in the future.  The art of how architect dress is not inevitable in this century.

What does exist, however, is the association in people’s minds of fashion with transience and architecture with permanence. But in the last two decades evaluations in these categories have started to change.6

FIG.7.2: Suliana in Broadway Malyan office, Machester 2007

Suliana has proved that her clothes do not really give an impact towards her architecture career.  When she moved to England, she never tried any attempt to dress up to impress anymore. She carried herself as she always been. And she did not restrict herself to wear her synonym Malay traditional clothes only; she also explored some other style, as shown in FIG.6.2. The important keys here are architects need to be confident and comfortable at the same time, no matter how they dress up. Clothing is maybe a symbol of modern man, but clothing cannot be simply a symbol of modern architecture because they do not march the same way. Same goes with fashion and architecture.

Garments are wrapped around the body in successive layers of underwear, outer clothing and overcoats that define the outer core of the body, while tiers of sleeping bags, tents and shelters symbolically expand into house and skyscrapers.5

Fashion and dressing architecture have no relation at all. Not as what we seen in many debates about fashion in architecture. We can’t expect architects to be the model themselves. This is mainly because architects have more important role to shape their building rather than themselves. Eventough the architect was not in Adolf Loos’s opinion, an artist, but a kind of tailor;18 architect cannot tailor himself as his own clothing experiment because architect profession purely meant to be dealt with buildings. Architects can borrow the pleating technique, stapling, cutting and draping from traditional tailoring to design a building, but if architect choose to tailor a dress, he is not providing architectural services.

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[20] Interview between author and Nursuiana (Feb 2009)

6 Ruth H.(2006) Architecture and Fashion. In Ruth, H. Absolutely fabulous! : Architecture and Fashion. Prestel: London

5 Bradley Q. (2003) Introduction. In Badley Q. The fashion of architecture Berg: Oxford. p.3

18 Jules L. (1983) Adolf Loos and The English Dandy. In Architectural Review, Vol CL XIX No.1038. p.

Orange Architect: Steps Builder

Text : Nor Azua Ruslan

[ Dressing Architecture : Colour, Style & Fashion ]

In Relation With Architects and Clothing

Original works submitted to the Manchester School of Architecture for the Bachelor of Architecture dated April 2009. Received a commendation in Summer 2010.

6.0] Orange Architect: Steps Builder

When I left TRHY in 2007, I joined Z&SR Architectural Ventures Sdn. Bhd., another calibre-firm located in Setiawangsa, Kuala Lumpur. The director, Ar. Norzaini Mufti has slightly different background and taste.

Ar. Norzaini Mufti has its own sole-proprietary company called Zaini Mufti Architect. Zaini Mufti received his first education in Kuala Lumpur. He then flew to United States for his architectural education and was a scholar in master from Michigan University. Knowing him as a cheerful person, he loves orange colour and I often seeing him in orange polo t-shirt on his bright and sunny days in the office. For some reasons, he loves this orange colour so much that he did an Interior Design for his new office in Setiawangsa decorated with orange furniture as shown in FIG.5.1 and 5.2.

However, I have never seen him in orange shirt whenever we went out for a meeting with client. Hypothetically, I think maybe because the colour is too loud and not suitable for such formal event, and when I asked him about this, he said that;

As you might have noticed, I dress very casually in the office because I like to work in comfortable clothing.  I do not relate formal clothing with quality of work, thus, I do not impose strict dress code in my office. For newer clients, I do wear so called more ‘acceptable’ office wear not so much to impress but more not to offend if they turn out to be very judgmental towards people by their appearance.  But with regular clients who are already aware of the quality of our services, our clothing become irrelevant.[19]

FIG.6.1: Orange Feature Wall at office lobby.

FIG.6.2: Orange furniture in meeting area.

I was once the Project Leader for a Secondary School project in Port Klang, Malaysia. Throughout the Design Stage, I did involve in the Colour Scheme proposal for the school’s buildings and he turns up with this idea of having striking orange feature walls for each block, which happened to be his favourite colour, and FIG.5.3 below show an illustration of the proposed Secondary School project.

FIG.6.3: Proposed Secondary School with Orange feature walls.

The thing that interests me most is seeing Zaini Mufti as an architect who picks orange as his personal colour and emphasis it in his design. I personally admire this attitude. He was not that kind of architect incomparable to Ken Yeang, not yet. But he ought to have his own personal strength towards creating his own trademark, maybe to be well-known in the future, who knows?  I sought for his personal point of view about this to see how does it related to each other; accidentally or purposely.

Of course one of the main reason is I like orange and it is documented that different colours will create different ambience.  Orange is rather cheerful and happy colour and I would like to create a cheerful environment whenever I can. As a young office, we are still looking for an identity and in these first few projects, we focus on the feature walls and the colour whenever we can to create trademark architecture for the firm.  But I can guarantee you that this will not be our trademark forever and all firms will evolve through maturity and experience. 19

Having had him talked about maturity and experience, is actually how it relates to fashion. Fashion does evolve throughout maturity and experience somehow, like everything does. But to exemplify yourselves from other Architects, you might want to end up being different. You can be a fashion icon at you own style so that everyone recognise you. That is what fashion designer does. We can tell Vera Wang’s dresses by the clean and sleek pleated and ruffled silk dresses on runaway and we can recognise Tom Abg Saufi’s batik dresses with his bold statement of batik in shocking colour.  

To gain recognition, architects need to create their own fashion statement that is reflected in themselves and their buildings to be famous. Perhaps, this is something that Zaini Mufti is looking into because there are risks being stranded in the cloud nine forever in his entire architect’s profession if did not even try.

But that is certainly not true.  We can’t compare architect and Fashion Designer because these two professions have their own unique, however similar their design processes are. Yes, Architects are designers. However we dress, we must not be sloppy. Preferably, we should be fashionable, but need not be expensive but creative and exploratory. 19 Zaini Mufti is in his 40’s and yet still looking for his architectural trademark for his 8-year old company, but this does not mean choosing the best clothes nor fashion for himself, but by choosing the best building characteristic strongly which will establish the firm’s identity.

People who try to understand what fashion is all about to use words like beautiful, chic elegant, smart, dashing. It is not a matter of that at all. It is a matter of being dressed in such ways to attract the least attention....No nation has many fops or peacocks as the German...,A peacock is a man whose clothes serve only to make him stand out from his surrounding.18

I strongly agree with his opinion and as I flashback throughout the years I had in TRHY, I realized that it was one of a very important things that I’ve learned in my architectural education, which cannot be obtained during those years in university. Eventough I have a thought that architects who dare to wear something different has courage to design something unique, but I do not have a data to back it up.

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[19] Interview between author and Zaini Mufti (Feb 2009)

19 Interview between author and Zaini Mufti (Feb 2009)

19 Interview between author and Zaini Mufti (Feb 2009)

18 Jules L., Adolf Loos and The English Dandy in Architectural Review, Vol. CLXIX No 1038 Aug 1983