"A few years ago if you were walking around in khakis and a jumper or a polo shirt, you kind of felt you were dressed the way successful men are dressed," said Mr David Wolfe, creative director at Donegar Group, a New York based style consultancy representing more than 1,000 retailers worldwide, including Dunnes Stores. "Now that those men are crashing and burning, the mystique has gone. The sale of suits and shirts and ties is definitely going up."
After a 10-year decline, men's suits and ties are back in corporate America. With the dotcom burn-out, and with George W Bush and his conservative allies taking over the White House, dressing down has gone out of fashion.
It's also a matter of aspiration and credibility. Unemployed dotcom workers are dressing up to impress potential employers in a squeezed jobs market. Analysts, investment bankers, lawyers and traders are turning back to professional gear to counter a battered image that has fallen with the stock market.
For most of a decade the trend has been away from suits. "It's the one area where I gave in to the younger generation, they all wanted to dress down," said Mr Denis Kelleher, chief executive officer of Manhattan investment firm Wall Street Access. "I'm not at all sure that it's a good thing now. If anyone is going out to meet a client they have to wear a tie."
The anti-suit trend began in Silicon Valley, where technogeeks in T-shirts, jeans and broken spectacles became gurus of the information age. Start-up companies attracted entrepreneurial students who disdained a shirt and tie. Casual gear became a symbol of the new economy, a show of freedom and innovation by a new, unconventional generation.
Even top executives of the industry, like Mr Bill Gates of Microsoft, addressed conferences in open-necked shirts. But that too is changing. It didn't go unnoticed that when Yahoo's chairman, Mr Tim Koogle, showed up on CNBC recently to discuss his resignation as chief executive, he wore a suit and tie rather than his trade-mark turtleneck.
The White House, with its cabinet drawn from the oldstyle boardrooms of the US, has been setting the tone. Staff have been told to wear jackets and ties, and not to come to work in jeans, even at the weekend, in contrast to the more casual dress code of the Clinton administration.
"When I look at the political scene I look at how it is going to affect the way people dress or whether it's an expression of how they're thinking," said Mr Wolfe. The counter-revolution in men's fashion "was set up to happen because the economy was so good and we were moving into a conservative mindset with the election of George W Bush".
"You can track this one," he continued. "The sale of suits and shirts and ties is definitely going up. Sales of suits are not yet as high as when the dressdown craze started in the mid to late 1990s but it's certainly edging back up. "The fact that it's happening at all is taking the menswear industry by surprise, because the general feeling was that the dressing down of the business world was going to be an endless trend.
"We have been projecting a return of classic clothes just because I think people were getting disenchanted with so much casual wear and then suddenly the downturn in the economy pushed the panic button. People who are frightened are easily swayed so I think many people, and now more and more because the media is jumping on this story, are becoming aware that people who are well dressed are more likely to keep their jobs or to be able to get new jobs.
"The mystique of looking like you are a dotcom maverick now really doesn't make you look like you are dressed for success. Dressing down looks like you're dressing for the unemployment line.
"Also we've got a younger generation of very fashion-conscious young men entering the workplace who, when they were teenagers, were the ones who put Tommy Hilfiger on the map. Now that they are moving into the business world, they certainly don't want to dress like their fathers - and their fathers are the ones who are wearing khaki shirts and jumpers to the office. So we are already seeing an interest in suits for a younger generation of men."
The newest thing in clothing is already evident. Louis Boston retail store in Boston, which specialises in formal wear such as Oxford bespoke suits, has an advertisement showing men in business suits paddling on a beach with the message: "In case you hadn't noticed, suits are back."
The firm's chairman, Mr Murray Pearlstein, told the Wall Street Journal: "Every week there seem to be more people willing to put money into a suit."
Companies that only went so far as to allow business-casual are now starting to downgrade the casual. Business advisers O'Melveny & Myers has sent memos to employees emphasising the importance of business in business/casual.
A recent e-mail sent to tech stock analysts at Credit Suisse First Boston said: "Effective immediately, suit and tie are recommended for group functions and especially if you are meeting a client for the first time. Business casual may pass with clients that analysts know well; however, business casual should still include a blazer/jacket."
The Republic may be ahead in this new post-dotcom fashion trend. "When I travel to Dublin I really find the young Irish businessmen much more designer- and fashion-sensitive than the young businessmen in America," said Mr Wolfe. "They have a receptivity to dressing well even when they are wearing casual gear. They are trading it up so it's higher quality, it's higher priced."
