Dress Codes, Human Rights, Professional Image, and Cultural Identity

On a typical weekday in Colombo, you can spot the contradiction from a bus window: office workers in smart suits and closed shoes hustling through 32°C heat, while street vendors and civil servants, in sarong and short-sleeved shirts, look unbothered.

- by C. A. Saliya

The first are dressed for an imported idea of "professionalism." The second are dressed for Sri Lanka.

That tension between code and climate, image and identity sits at the heart of an overdue debate. Around the world, dress codes are loosening in step with changing norms and warming cities. Here, we still default to Eurocentric formality in many public offices, schools and boardrooms, even as electricity bills soar and commuters wilt. The consequence is more than discomfort. Rigid dress policies can undermine human rights, erase cultural presence, and entrench gendered expectations, all while failing the simple test of common sense in the tropics.

What dress codes actually do

Dress codes aren't merely about "looking neat." Scholars have long shown that clothing is a sign system through which organisations communicate status, credibility and belonging. People form split-second judgments from attire, often reading competence or ethicality from a jacket or sari long before a word is spoken. That's why banks insist on polish at the counter; why schools hope uniforms level the field.

But those judgments are not neutral. They're learned. And in postcolonial societies, they tend to privilege Western silhouettes (suits, ties, pencil skirts) as the visual grammar of authority. The effect is subtle: a Kandyan sari is "traditional," a navy blazer is "professional." The message to a young graduate in breathable cotton or natural hair is equally clear conform, or be judged before you begin.

The human rights angle

Dress codes enter rights territory in four ways.

Autonomy and expression. Clothing is part of identity. Overly prescriptive rules makeup mandates for women, bans on headscarves or dreadlocks, blanket prohibitions on tattoos limit how people present themselves, often with unequal burdens on minorities.