Would You Be Caught Dead Looking Like This?

I didn't think so. OK, the guy on the right doesn't look so bad, but as for the one on the left, I have but one question: WTF?

Seriously, who in their right mind would wear an outfit like this? Not even the most flamboyant metrosexual would be seen in public wearing this.

Or would they?

FIRST came Casual Fridays, that dread episode in the history of fashion, with their invitation for men to trade in suits for Dockers and to swap a proper shirt and tie for an open neck and a daring flash of masculine décolletage.

Then the bare ankle migrated from country-club Saturdays to meeting-room Mondays and suddenly men, whether shod in wingtips or loafers, were widely seen without socks. Now it appears that, after some stops and starts in recent seasons, the men of the white collar work force are marching into the office in shorts.

It was no more than a moment ago, in the sartorial long view, that a guy who came to work wearing short pants would have been shown the door — or anyway, given the address for human resources at U.P.S. All that appears to be changing.

Consider that an advertising agency in Salt Lake City this summer introduced a no-long-trousers policy. Consider the octogenarian New York lawyer who ditched his seersucker suit for jaunty camouflage shorts on the job. Consider the pack of stylish young men on the streets of Manhattan who find it not only sensible, in thermometer terms, to beat the heat by wearing shorts but also, in style terms, cool.