Puma, United, and Dress Code Trends
New York Times

Vanessa Friedman discusses the changing dress code climate with Professor Scafidi in her latest article for the New York Times.

That tension has always existed, but in the past, the employer has generally won — at least when an individual was acting under the aegis of a brand, or on its behalf. Last year, however, when another dress code brouhaha broke out — this one about a temporary worker in Britain who was sent home for refusing to wear high heels — Susan Scafidi, a professor at Fordham Law School in New York and the founder of the Fashion Law Institute, told me that the pendulum had begun to swing the other way.

As an example, she pointed out that the New York City Commission on Human Rights published new guidelines in December 2015 for the municipal law that prohibited “enforcing dress codes, uniforms, and grooming standards that impose different requirements based on sex or gender” (e.g. If women have to wear heels, so do men).