company dress code requires women to wear high heels and only shop at Ann Taylor

A reader writes:

A friend of mine got a job in property management and wasn’t told about the dress code until a couple months in. It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.

The highlights:

* Women can only shop at Ann Taylor. They are given $700 twice a year for a clothing allowance, but $700 only gets you two suits and two shirts.

* They have to wear certain color combinations on certain days, which means you can’t just buy those two suits and rotate them every other day.

* Women have to wear heels. Property management involves some desk work but a whole lot of walking around, so you have to run around inside, outside, and up and down stairs in heels.

Can this company really get away with a dress code that requires employees to spend several hundred dollars on clothing and ruin their feet and back?

I have worked in property management for nearly a decade and the worst dress code I dealt with had me only able to wear certain color suits, purchased from anywhere, with no specific colors on specific days, and I could wear dress flats.

This is extremely weird. In particular, why only Ann Taylor?! If they want a certain look (which I’m skeptical is necessary in property management, but fine), there are plenty of ways to get that look without restricting people to a single store. I mean, the business clothes at Banana Republic aren’t that different than the ones at Ann Taylor, and there are plenty of other places to get that sort of tailored, corporate look, including most department stores.

But to answer your question: Yes, companies can have dress codes that require employees to spend several hundred dollars on clothing. (Think, for example, of companies that simply require suits.) However, the more restrictive they are in their demands, the closer they get to the clothing being considered a uniform, which in some cases the employer has to pay for.

Federal law considers the following clothing categories to be uniforms: (1) required clothing with the company’s logo, (2) required clothing that’s similar to costumes (like a bustier or a pirate shirt), and (3) required clothing that’s “specialized or distinctive,” like a yellow jacket or a striped dress. Your friend’s employer’s rules about certain colors on certain days could be getting close to #3. However, federal law also says that clothing won’t be considered a uniform if it’s ordinary clothing in a fairly standard color or style that can be worn outside of the job (for example, a white button-down, black pants, etc.). But the more specialized the clothing is and the more limitations the employer places on the style or color, the more likely it is to be considered a uniform.

If it does meet the legal standard for a uniform, in some states employers are required to pay for it. In states without that requirement, the cost of the items still can’t take the employee’s pay below minimum wage. My guess — and I’m not a lawyer, only someone who reads way too much about employment law — is that your friend’s dress code probably doesn’t qualify as a uniform under the law.

But that doesn’t get them off the hook. If women are only permitted to shop at one store for work clothes while men can purchase their work clothes anywhere, that’s more likely to be an issue. Courts in the U.S. have generally upheld different dress codes for men and women — but only as long as the dress code doesn’t place a significantly higher burden on one sex. Restricting women to a single (not cheap) store while men can shop anywhere clearly places a higher burden on women than on men.

You would think that “different burden” standard would make the high heels an issue, too; requiring women to wear heels while allowing men to wear more comfortable (but still formal) shoes obviously places a higher burden on women. But courts haven’t ruled on “different burdens” in the way you might expect: for example, one court ruled it was okay for a casino to require women to style their hair in specific ways, wear stockings, and wear specific makeup looks, while men were only required to keep their hair and nails short — hardly an equivalent burden. (That does seem to be changing at the state level though. And for example, in California it’s illegal for employers to require women to wear skirts.) But I haven’t been able to find a clear ruling on high heels; so far there doesn’t appear to clear guidance on it.

But hey, someone needs to bring the first case; maybe it’s your friend and her coworkers.

If not, they might talk to each other about just pushing back as a group — pointing out that it’s more burdensome on women and that there’s no bona fide work need for the requirement.

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