"Practically the Uniform of the Tribe": Dress Codes Among Commercial Travelers

Introduction

"Our outer dress does inner work for us, and if clothes "mean", it is in the first place to ourselves, telling us we are or may be something we have meant to be"¹

What is it to wear a uniform? Some occupations involve enforced adoption of a uniform, the police and armed services most obviously. Yet other occupations—such as management consultants—adopt styles or codes of dress that, while not enforced, have a currency and coherence such that we might think of them as a tacit uniform. Why—and to what effect—do some occupational groups voluntarily adopt tacit dress codes? This essay will explore those questions in relation to depictions of English traveling salesmen from the start of the nineteenth century to the eve of World War II. Representations of English traveling salesmen ("commercial travelers" in British parlance, the usage that will be adopted hereafter) frequently highlighted their physical appearance and in particular their modes of dress, showing remarkable continuity, certainly across the greater part of the period covered here. Travelers were noted for their exuberant, "flashy," dandy modes of dressing (see figures 1 and 2). These modes of dress were of a part with the vibrant occupational culture in which

Figure 1.

"There is nothing like iron, Sir; nothing." Illustration depicting a traveling salesman from Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm (London: Chapman and Hall, 1862). Artist, J.E. Millais. Courtesy of the Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration, Cardiff University (www.dmvi.cf.ac.uk).

Figure 2.

Portrait of S.M. Burroughs, who began his working life as a traveling salesman. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library London.

travelers participated but at the same time also marked travelers out among their fellow citizens and were often highlighted as part of a broader critique of the traveler's character and, by extension, role in society. The ways in which travelers chose to dress and how they and others reacted to and spoke about those choices can tell us much about the ways in which this significant occupational group negotiated the task of creating for itself meaningful roles and identities. However, as with other aspects of their occupational culture, travelers faced significant challenges in using dress to positive effect. Here, as elsewhere, they occupied complex territories over which they had only partial control. Dress was part of the process through which the emotional labor involved in this occupation was, literally, embodied and, sometimes, resisted and subverted.

In the twentieth century, travelers' dress codes underwent some significant changes, becoming more subdued or toned down. The "dandyism" with which they had long been associated was reduced but not eliminated. However, there were also elements of continuity, not least in the persistence of an (albeit altered) tacit dress code or "uniform" (see figure 3). These changes, it is argued, reflected the changing societal and organizational contexts within which travelers were now working, changes which imposed a new set of pressures on them and increasingly restrained their independence. Embodying still took place but did so in ways that reflected a more repressive work environment.

Figure 3.

Clerical medical outdoor staff, 1924. Courtesy of Lloyds Banking Group plc Archives.

At the same time, as well as being part of the process through which travelers negotiated the creation of positive and empowering roles and identities, their dress spoke of their relationship to wider issues: class, masculinity, sexuality, and, ultimately, modernity and the self. Sharing characteristics with other archetypes of the modern urban scene, such as the flanêur, the dandy, the masher, and the swell, the protean commercial traveler, with his shimmering and alluring, but shallow, surface appearance appeared to presage the passing of the solidities and certainties of the pre-modern world. Thus, attention to dress codes among occupational groups, such as travelers, has the potential to illuminate not only organizational shifts and effects but also wider processes in society.

Sources and Historiography

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