Across the country, banks, insurance companies and real estate agencies are asking their employees to take off their clothes. Then they have them do something really different-dress alike.
Uniforms are making a splash in the American workplace-for bank officers and travel agents, runners at the stock exchange and employees at funeral homes.
The clothing is done in fine fabrics and snappy styles and may be called ”career apparel” instead of the more prosaic U-word. The outfits range from the gold blazers that Century 21 real estate brokers wear to mix-and-match skirt sets and dapper paisley ties. The colors are simply au courant:
African violet, glen plaid, gold, olive, for instance.
Employers say men and women in uniform look more professional and are easily identifiable to customers. Employees, too, seem to like their uniforms. Lisa Grasso, an agent for Rosenbluth Travel in Philadelphia, said she gets raves about her uniform: a pleated or straight skirt in eggplant, a matching blazer with a paisley handkerchief in the pocket, a white blouse with one of three different collars, black shoes and pearls.
”They`re not real pearls,” she said.
”It`s great to wear a uniform to work because you don`t have to worry about what to wear,” said Grasso, 23, who works in Rosenbluth`s office at Philadelphia International Airport. ”And this is kind of elegant. If you go out after work you can wear it, no problem.”
The airport agents, who are seen by hundreds of people every day, are the only employees Rosenbluth outfits in uniforms; those who work in the travel agency`s other offices can dress as they like. But Grasso isn`t bothered by the lack of free will.
”A couple of times, I worked in the regular offices, and at first it felt good to not have to wear a uniform,” Grasso said. ”But after a while, you wake up and say: `I don`t feel like going to the cleaners` or `Did I wear that last week?` Plus, it saves you a lot of money. All I have to spend it on is fun clothes.”
In the last 10 years, annual sales of uniforms have grown from $2 billion to $6 billion, according to Bernard Lepper, executive director of the National Association of Uniform Manufacturers and Distributors, a New York-based trade group.
The jump is in part a result of the increase in service-related businesses-from fast-food restaurants to insurance agencies and banks.
At First National Bank of Chicago, uniforms have become so popular that what started as a teller-only, plain-blue-wrapper idea has blossomed steadily since 1984 to include account executives, personal bankers, security guards, customer service representatives and supervisors-anyone who is seen by the public.
There are now close to 1,800 employees who dress to the nines in lavender, Glen plaid, tan, olive, navy or red wool and cotton blends-no more tacky polyester. And there are eight ”career apparel” employees whose sole job is to order, fit and alter the outfits.
”The point in the beginning was to make the tellers feel like bankers,” said assistant vice president Savannah Hannah. ”But now, even some of the bigger managers say they wish they had career apparel. We have gotten calls from other banks, and the University of Illinois hospital ordered two of our suits for receptionists. Even our customers have been buying the blouses and ties.”
”Uniforms aren`t just to keep workers from getting dirty at the factory anymore,” said Bob Isaacson, corporate marketing director of UniFirst Corp., a Wilmington, Mass., company that rents and sells uniforms. ”More employees these days have direct contact with customers, and uniforms certainly go a long way toward helping sustain an image of professionalism.”
Other things have helped the uniform industry: crime, for example.
”There are more private security guards and more doormen in buildings, and those people tend to be uniformed,” Lepper said.
Uniforms have become so popular that the inventory at Central Uniforms in Philadelphia is bursting at the seams, said owner Debra Langer. The store sells to the region`s booming health-care and hospital industry, to Atlantic City restaurants and casinos, to car-rental agencies and to church deacons.
The demand for uniforms has got Central shipping orders all over the country and Europe, and the company is planning over the next year or so to add a mail-order catalog, Langer said.
Jos. A. Bank, the Maryland-based clothing retailer, recently created a separate career-apparel division that sells to businesses like the large Atlanta real estate agency, Trammell Crow Residential.
Employers have found that uniforms don`t have to be stifling or staid.
”You can go somewhere and people say, `Oh, you work for Merchants Bank,”` said Eileen Cain, assistant vice president at Merchants Bank & Trust Co. in Gulfport, Miss., which outfits all female employees from tellers to bank officers.
