Candidates Figure What Voters Need From Them Is a Good Dressing Down

Hopefuls Embrace ‘Campaign Casual’ And Roll Up Their Sleeves Only So Far.  What can we learn about Business Casual?

By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON with select editing by Erik Peterson

How do a Harvard-schooled private-equity titan, a Mandarin-speaking former ambassador, a libertarian physician-congressman and the nation’s longest-serving governor convince Americans that they are men of the people?
Campaign casual.

Fashion observers say the men in the Republican presidential primary race are setting a new standard for studied sartorial ease. Working the campaign trail in shirt-sleeves and jeans, they’re tossing off their neckties—and with them, a century of tradition.

“Good lord, what have we come to?” says Daniel James Cole, professor of fashion history at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “I read that Mitt Romney’s wife bought him Gap skinny jeans…We don’t think of jeans as being presidential.” The Romney campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A Republican former White House aide suggests the 2012 candidates have gone far beyond what he calls the “three F’s” rule: A president looks better without a tie only when appearing at a fair, on a factory floor or at the scene of a flood.

Indeed, Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, went tieless when kicking off his candidacy.

Giving an informal air to the formal announcement, he wore a roomy shirt in a tattersall pattern—a plaid first used in 18th-century British horse blankets—with sleeves “rolled as if he [had] entered an impromptu hot-dog-eating contest,” wrote Kurt Soller, Esquire’s style editor. The magazine’s Web story was titled, “Mitt Romney’s New Strategy: Stop Dressing Well.”

Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah and U.S. ambassador to China, traveled New Hampshire this past spring in a plaid lumberjack shirt and oversize jean jacket that staffers say brought him luck in his 2004 and 2008 gubernatorial races. Back in the state over the Fourth of July, the candidate, his daughter, wife and a staffer all were decked out in gingham plaid.

Max Wastler, who writes the men’s fashion blog All Plaidout, wants politicians to stop wearing plaid to denote regular guy-ness. “It smacks of falsehood—like you’re trying to be the Brawny paper towel guy, when you’re really Mr. Peanut with your monocle and cane,” he said.

The presidential campaign is featuring more denim and fewer neckties than in past years, as candidates try to appeal to the average American by dressing like one. Elizabeth Williamson has details on Lunch Break.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul ditched the dress shirt entirely and worked Iowa this summer in a striped polo shirt with a little orange logo on the breast. So far he’s the only contender who has dressed down to the minimum, posting Facebook images of himself in a swimsuit.
“Business suits: They are so 2004,” Wonkette blogger Kirsten Boyd Johnson wrote.
In some ways, the candidates are reflecting Americans’ growing preference for more-comfortable clothing.

But the clothes also carry a political message. Wearing less-tailored clothes helps multimillionaire Mr. Romney and Mr. Huntsman, the son of a billionaire, play down their wealth and patrician backgrounds. All the candidates are striving to reach unemployed Americans and rural voters.
Mr. Romney’s informal look won praise from John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor. “You’re taking your casual clothes from the bottom of the drawer,” Mr. Sununu says he told Mr. Romney recently.

Casual clothes may also help the candidates reach young people disillusioned with that other shirt-sleeves candidate President Barack Obama. Studies show that “people under 25 don’t trust men in ties,” says Mark-Evan Blackman, menswear design professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
But he adds: “The pitfall is wearing…granddaddy jeans,” a fashion faux pas committed by nearly every male candidate in the race, including the president, who has appeared several times in roomy, high-waisted jeans.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry often outdresses his competitors, which may seem surprising for a man who grew up in denim, went off to college in boxers sewn by his mother and as governor has worn trucker hats and hunter’s camouflage. But people who know Mr. Perry well say that unlike Mr. Romney, known for careers in both business and politics, Mr. Perry needs to show that he’s more than a farmer’s kid who has done well.

“Perry is my favorite for his machismo, his husky look,” says Mr. Wastler, citing the candidate’s taste in ties “as thick as Texas toast.” But even Mr. Perry has lost the necktie in several recent campaign appearances.

The one exception to the campaign casual look: Michele Bachmann, who generally avoids being seen in anything less formal than skirt suits, often paired with a starched, stiff-collared white blouse.
Her traditional look may be aimed at a traditional goal, says the Fashion Institute’s Mr. Cole: Signaling to voters that she means business.

Presidents have helped shape clothing trends since Woodrow Wilson wore a cutaway frock coat; a hatless John F. Kennedy helped kill his era’s fedora craze. But they’ve been loath to stray too far into casual territory.

President Richard Nixon sent his staff a 10-page re-election memo with suggestions for humanizing him, but “I don’t believe he ever wore bell-bottoms,” says Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard Nixon presidential library.

Normally natty Ronald Reagan flouted the rules in 1980, surprising political observers by speaking near the Statue of Liberty with his sleeves rolled up and a chest-baring shirt, with two buttons open.
“It was an outdoor event, and I think the president wanted to fit in with what the crowd was wearing,” says Ed Meese, who ran Mr. Reagan’s 1980 campaign and later served as attorney general. “But that was unusual for him, because usually he would wear a coat and tie.”

The one forum where no man ventures tieless is the presidential debate. But even there, this year’s candidates have largely shunned the red tie and navy suit look, wearing a rainbow of cravats that has included Rick Santorum‘s Mary Kay Cadillac pink and Mr. Huntsman’s 24 karat-looking gold.
Looking thrown-together is anything but seat-of-the-pants for a potential president. Washington haberdashers counsel politicians to wear dress shirts, which have smaller armholes, instead of shirts made for casual wear, which can look baggy. Sleeves should be rolled to above the elbow, not the middle of the forearm. One button should be left open, not two.

 The only people in Washington who buy button-downs, are “the average working guy.”

Find few of your favorite outfits @ Business Casual outfits

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