Dressing up to move up

"A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, and then forgotten all about them." 

In a day and age when office dress codes are almost non-existent especially for working men, the advice above, courtesy of Hardy Amies, is one that many self-respecting male professionals and soon-to-be graduates would be well-advised to heed. Not just because the market for serious romantic relations is much trickier these days (due to well-documented preference shifts in favor of postponing marriage for income and personal growth, as well as the complications arising from less stringent relationship arrangements), but more so because of the generally bad state of the job market. 

If there's any good the "casual revolution" brought about by the dot-com boom (or more appropriately, regression) of the 1990s, it is the fact that looking clean and presentable has become a source of comparative advantage and, consequently, a subtle yet powerful signal of one's fitness as a worker or as a partner. (The simple logic here is that being well-kempt tells the other party how seriously you take her and whatever the situation is.) The "casual revolution" has also unintentionally helped those who are poorer and less physically attractive, by virtue of the now-greater marginal value of affordable, accessible services like good tailoring and having one's hair cut. From a microeconomics perspective, two observations:

The commonness of unrefined sartorial sensibilities has made dressing up a less costly endeavor in terms of net gains from invested time and effort (bigger payoffs and more positive externalities, aside from getting compliments);

The prices of the services mentioned relative to personal incomes have not gone up appreciably over time.

The key, of course, to maintaining the value of dressing up these days is to keep its rewards discreet. After all, too many market entrants, as any economics student knows, eliminates any comparative advantage.