"Dressing down" to impress in academic settings I came across this highly-upvoted comment on reddit (15,300 karma) by /u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod


  The CEO of the company I work for said that it's not uncommon for
  programmers to be asked to dress down for important meetings.
  Apparently investors don't think programmers who dress well are good
  programmers.


I was wondering if this logic applies to academia, particularly in fields like math, computer science, and philosophy where stereotypically many top people  dress sloppily. In other words, are there academic contexts where dressing badly will make me seem more competent at my job?

Perhaps this would be an interesting social science experiment to perform, if it hasn't been done already!
If an academic is dressed in an unusually casual manner, I generally ignore it.

If an academic is dressed in an unusually formal manner, I assume one of these:


They are an administrator, or manager, rather than an academic
They are here for a job interview and they don't know it is not necessary to dress formally
They are going to an event outside academia, like a funeral


I do not think anyone is impressed by either dressing up or down, but it can send a signal.