I was in London on business a few weeks ago. The first day was pre-planned "jet lag day": arrive early, sleep it off, work a little, and walk around in the noon day sun. Early to bed, and tomorrow, you're good as new. (Because I love London so much, I won't complain about the billable day lost in the process).My hotel was near both Saville Row and the business district, so I took the opportunity of my stroll to look for London business women. I was hoping to confirm that the clothes I had packed would not be too far off base.
Here's what I found:
1) There are no London business women!
I wandered through bustling London streets, for two hours on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon, and I simply could not find any exemplars. At first I thought I was in the wrong place, or it was the wrong time, but there were businessmen everywhere in classic London business dress: chalk stripes, colorful shirts, cufflinks and flashy ties. Where were the women?
I cannot explain this, except possibly, as pure law of numbers. Are there still so many fewer women in the business world in London than in the United States?
Finally, I found a few. And I do mean a few, two maybe, in that whole long walk. I saw a small handful of others in meetings the next day, and I learned something else:
2) On my (admittedly small) sample size, London business women dress like U.S. business women dressed twenty years ago.
The women I saw and met were all wearing skirts or dresses. ALL of them! And (with the exception of some extraordinary shoes--we didn't wear those in the early '90s!), the skirts were the same stodgy, man-like skirt suits we abandoned in 1999.
Now, I have nothing against skirts and dresses. I often wear them, but increasingly, when I'm at my most lawyerly -- in court or for a pitch to a prospective client for a hundred million dollar case -- I wear trousers. Elegant, shapely, female trousers, but trousers, nonetheless. (I'm especially partial to Elie Tahari.)
What was wrong with trousers? I don't know, really. There's no answer to that, except that there was something vaguely frightening about it, and not just to men. Somewhere, subconsciously, we were all afraid--men and women alike--that if the women did everything just like the men--if the women were not only lawyers but, gasp, even wore trousers--we would all lose our way.
London can be a confusing city. But the maps are excellent and omnipresent. If you keep your head, you can't get too terribly lost. I'm pretty sure in a few years, the women in trousers will be everywhere.
(But, please, keep the shoes). Ooo, la, la.
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