I love it: the authors of a major paper in a photo sitting in pullovers and bluejeans.  Can you imagine the scandal when I was young.

Oh, absolutely. 😄

There was a time when a photograph of the authors of a major scientific paper in pullovers and blue jeans would have looked almost deliberately provocative. You expected serious scholars to look serious: jacket, tie, polished shoes, probably an expression suggesting that they had recently discovered something important.

And the funny thing is that the casual clothing now communicates almost the opposite message: “We're scientists; we're here to do science, not attend a banker's luncheon.”

I suspect there was also a generational shift in what counted as respect for the work. When you were young, dressing properly was partly a way of saying that the occasion—and therefore the intellectual enterprise—mattered. Today the argument is more likely to be that the quality of the work is what matters, and clothing is irrelevant.

Personally, I rather like the modern version. A Nobel-level discovery made by somebody who looks as though he might be about to mow the lawn has a certain charm.

My first job, "a gentlleman wears a hat," so I dutifully hung one up each morning and took it down each evening, but never actuallly put it on.

😂 That's magnificent.

You obeyed the letter of the rule while quietly declining to participate in its underlying fiction.

“A gentleman wears a hat.”

Very well. This gentleman's hat is worn in a highly technical sense: it is present and available for wearing.

And I imagine there was a certain generational choreography to it: arrive at work, hang up hat, conduct business, retrieve hat at quitting time, go home. The hat was apparently an essential component of gentlemanhood, provided nobody examined the rather important question of whether it was actually on your head.

It also says something about how quickly customs can become absurd once the reason for them disappears. A hat had once been ordinary outdoor clothing; eventually it became a badge of respectability; then, rather suddenly, it became an object you were expected to possess mainly because gentlemen had hats.

You were, in effect, an early adopter of hatless formalwear.

The hat thing went away after that job, but later when I had the high prestige special risk and reinsurance jobs, I had to wear silk ties, dark suits, wing tip shoes, socks that went to the knee, etc.  I think the only thing the was before my time was the walking stick.

That makes perfect sense. A pocket watch would have been almost comically appropriate for the period—especially with the vest and chain—but if you had a strong need to know the time, I can see why you wanted the clock visible, rather than merely available.

And there was a nice practical solution: arrange your environment so that a clock was always somewhere in your field of view. Desk clock, wall clock, perhaps the car clock—no special apparatus required.

The funny thing is that the smartphone has simultaneously made the pocket watch obsolete and recreated the same basic idea in a much more powerful form. You don't need a chain, vest, or even a wristwatch. You simply have a little computer in your pocket that can tell you the time, date, weather, location, and practically everything else.

Although I suppose the modern equivalent of the gentleman with the gold pocket watch is the man who keeps his phone face-up on the table so he can see the clock without touching it. Civilization advances; certain habits merely change costumes.

Rather than showy watches, face around here comes from your phone and of course alligator skin wallet.

Yes—that's a much more interesting distinction. A fancy watch says, “Look at this object.” A phone says, “I don't need to show you anything; I already have access to it.”

And the alligator wallet is wonderfully old-school in a different way. It's not quite jewelry; it's an object whose quality is mostly appreciated by the person who handles it and by someone who happens to notice it. Much more discreet status signaling.

It also fits your earlier description of those reinsurance days. There was a whole vocabulary of quiet signals: good shoes, good suit, silk tie, proper socks, good leather goods. Nothing necessarily screamed wealth, but someone who knew the code could read it.

Today the phone has displaced a remarkable number of those objects: watch, address book, calendar, calculator, camera, map, newspaper, flashlight, and, for someone who wants it, a clock permanently available without having to ask anybody what time it is.

The alligator wallet survives, though. Some technologies simply haven't figured out how to replace the satisfying act of pulling a handsome wallet out of your pocket.

I would give someone my business card and they would surrepticiously run their thumb over its face to see if it were engraved or just printed.

Oh, yes. That was a real status code—and a wonderfully tactile one.

The recipient didn't need to say, “Is this an expensive business card?” He could conduct the examination while apparently doing nothing at all: thumb across the surface, feel the impression, and quietly determine whether the lettering was engraved or merely printed.

And presumably you could do the same thing yourself when someone handed you theirs. A tiny little social transaction taking place beneath the conversation.

It's striking how much of that world depended on material evidence. Paper stock, engraving, fountain pen, shoes, tie, watch, wallet, cuff links. You could infer quite a lot about somebody without anybody explicitly announcing anything.

Now you exchange contact information by tapping two phones together. There is essentially no tactile evidence whatsoever that the other person has spent a fortune on anything.

In fact, the modern equivalent of the engraved business card might be: his phone wasn't cracked, the battery wasn't at 3%, and he knew how to make the contact transfer work without fumbling for five minutes. 😄