Will heatwaves make us go to work in shorts? The rediscovery of clothing as a form of climate adaptation

Walking around Milan with the thermometer exceeding thirty degrees, the sun beating down like a hammer and a heat from which there seems to be no escape, it is easy to come across men wearing jackets and ties despite the crazy temperatures. While in start-ups or creative companies in the city shorts are tolerated (but tank tops are not yet), a whole series of professions ranging from real estate agents to consultants, notaries, lawyers and various financiers have to deal with wearing tailored suits even in the middle of summer.

This raises two orders of problems. The first type concerns productivity: as demonstrated by a much-cited 2006 study, «performance increases with rising temperature up to 21-22 °C and decreases when the temperature exceeds 23-24 °C. Maximum productivity is reached at a temperature of about 22 °C. For example, at a temperature of 30 °C performance reaches only 91.1% of the maximum, i.e. the reduction in performance is 8.9%». The second concerns gender dynamics: women's clothing can be much lighter than men's, but in an office the temperature will tend to be kept very low because of the men in jackets and ties, triggering what CBC has defined as the “thermostat battle”.

If the problem is (literally) burning in the West, in Asia the difficulty increases. The number of offices is much higher, the temperatures often higher too, and corporate dress codes much stricter than in Europe or the USA. In Japan, since 2005 the Cool Biz initiative has encouraged the famous salarymen (i.e. the country's employees) to go without jackets and ties, but this year, between heat and energy saving, they went further: the governor of Tokyo invited workers to wear shorts. Something unheard of in the formal world of Japanese offices and actually in the whole world. Which leads us to ask ourselves, will climate change also become a sartorial change?