From Brad DeLong, via the Blogora

A prof's dress should serve to:

1. To make the appropriate people envy, in an appropriate way, the professor's (actual or counterfactual) spouse.
2. To make the professor comfortable.
3. To make the students more willing and eager to learn.
4.To take a particular stand on the great debate between the courtier Lord Chesterfield on the one hand and the intellectual Samuel Johnson on the other, summed up in Johnson's remark that Chesterfield's fashion-centered advice to his illegitimate son taught the boy "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master."

1. - done
2. - done
3. - done
4. ????

I have found that dressing up does not help my ethos. I run a casual classroom, so casual usually does it. I don't wear my work-out clothes, but I don't wear a suit, either.

Besides, my students wouldn't buy it if I wore a suit. I swear like a sailor, I have an eyebrow piercing, a pair of librarian glasses that I am told "look like trouble," and a penchant for very bright color. A business suit would just be strange. When I present at conferences I wear more formal attire - and in no way does this get respect. In fact, that is where I get hit on the most. I think I come across as a domminatrix when when I dress so severe. Honestly, I have no idea why that is. But that's the rumor.