So if someone told you that jeans were not proper working clothes and that you are being unprofessional, would you agree with them? What you're describing is j

So if someone told you that jeans were not proper working clothes and that you are being unprofessional, would you agree with them? What you're describing is just sticking a "I'm working" label onto yourself, which could be done with a button-down shirt just as well as with wearing a black t-shirt as long as it is, in your mind, "dressed for work". The part where the PR industry comes in is where people in a customer-facing position - people used to call those "suits" in the 90s for the exact reason of being inappropriately dressed for someone doing production, as opposed to management or sales, work - expect others to conform to their standards instead of the other way around. In other words, standards of dress tell a lot about whether your organization is engineering-driven or sales/marketing driven, and startup culture - traditionally driven at least in part by technical people - definitely has other standards than banking or consulting.