As a newly hired assistant professor of organizational behavior and sociology at the Yale School of Management, Walter (Woody) Powell observed a strange phenomenon through his office window. It was 1979. Bold colors and patterns were in style, and his students came to campus dressed in jeans and vivid colors.

But then recruiters would arrive from consulting firms like Bain, McKinsey, and Boston Consulting Group. Powell would see colorfully dressed students dash into the bathrooms before their job interviews, emerging in the muted attire of a businessperson: white shirts, navy blue jackets, pencil skirts.

“I was stunned by this transformation,” he says. When it came time to join an organization, these “free spirits” believed they had to put on the right uniform to be taken seriously.

Powell would see colorfully dressed students dash into the bathrooms before their job interviews, emerging in the muted attire of a businessperson.

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