Swiss Bank UBS Changes Dress Code. Again.

After being mocked for their new 44 pages dress code, Swiss bank UBS AG is revising it to a more modest booklet, that will not include suggestions in regard to the color of the underwear, for example. The new guide will focus on just a few mandatory elements, like wearing the bank’s official colors of, black, white and red.

In our opinion, the UBS dress code was very common sense, a good personal hygiene and grooming tutorial for anyone who wants to make a good impression in the public, but the modern society lost that sense of self discipline that made such documents valuable in the past.

To be honest, I don’t want to be addressed by a banker with garlic breath, and I bet none of the critics of the UBS dress code would enjoy such experiences. I wouldn’t trust a lady banker who looks like the bride of Dracula either, so a dress code that makes these female representatives of the bank look decent and clean is more than appropriate in my view. The existing dress code tells female employees how to apply makeup, what nail polish is acceptable (no black, thank God!), the appropriate use of flesh-colored stockings, and many other common sense guidelines for women in business.

And here is the deal: the 44 pages dress code was intended as a guide, and not as an absolute rule.

“They are meant as recommendations and not as hard and fast rules,” UBS spokesman Jean-Raphael Fontannaz told Reuters when the code was first released. “It remains to be decided whether the guidelines will be extended to all 300 Swiss branches, depending on how they are received by staff in the five pilot branches.”

After the media flack, it’s pretty clear that UBS was bended. The bank says it is whittling down its 44-page style guide to a more modest booklet that will concentrate on how to impress customers with a polished presence and sense of Swiss precision.