October 8, 2024

businessweek

Taste For Business

Has COVID killed the necktie (and professional attire)?

Dr. Shyam Paryani

This 1885 painting of Louis Pasteur by Albert Edelfelt shows the chemist in his standard laboratory attire: coat, vest and bow tie. The pandemic changed many things in society, not least of which is the definition of professional dress.

Modern-day drugs is generally related with Louis Pasteur, who ironically is credited with germ principle as the result in of disorder. He is pictured in a coat and bow tie as his standard gown in the 1800s.  

In a equivalent time, Florence Nightingale is viewed as the founder of modern day nursing and adopted uniforms at her faculty of nursing that she started out. Uniforms and white coats soon followed in the 1900s and became the regular of dress for health care experts right until the close of the 20th century.

The white coat has come to be emblematic of the health care occupation. All first-yr medical students routinely take part in a “white coat ceremony” that symbolizes their entry into medication. William Halsted created the very first pair of latex gloves and surgical gowns. Uniform scrubs were being to start with produced by the surgeon but they nevertheless remained as a extended robe in the late 1800s. Scrubs have been mainly utilised in the functioning home for about 100 many years. In the beginning, white uniforms symbolized cleanliness.