A step backward. I remember when it was a big deal that IBM decided their sales people could wear solid blue shirts as well as white. I admit I would be taken aback to meet a lawyer attired in cargo pants (and would ask if that would be court apparel or just office), but that is merely because it would be new to me.

I had oral argument last Friday, and at the end of the day had to appear at my daughter's school picnic. Attired in grey pin stripe, I loooked decidedly odd. A while back I used to muse that it would be a good thing if we adopted robes and wigs, as is the practice in England and the other Commonwealth jurisdictions, or maybe robes and hats, like in France. (We'd probably go with baseball caps, with our firm names on them, but I digress.) My thinking was that court costumes would be neutral, and would lend dignity to the process.

It seems now, though, that we have reached a place where we actually do have court costumes-- or at least uniforms, of a sort. The grey suit is almost like clerical garb-- nobody wears it except lawyers. It seems to me that over history the trend has been for dress to become more casual-- I can't think of a time when that trend has ever been reversed. Where all this leaves women in our increasingly female dominated glamor profession is hard to know.