For decades, a humble blue smock or vest has been required dress for employees at Wal-Mart Stores, conveying the retailer’s working-class image and its modest roots in rural Bentonville, Ark.
But a fancier Wal-Mart, which is now trying to attract upscale shoppers with 300-thread-count sheets, flat-screen televisions and nine-layer lasagna, calls for a fancier uniform.
So the company has begun quietly testing a new look for its 1.3 million workers in the United States: khaki pants and a navy blue polo shirt, according to employees briefed on the clothing plans.
Wal-Mart, long a symbol of dowdy, traditional fashions, is graduating to preppy.
The blue polo and khaki test, now being conducted in about 100 stores, may extend across the chain as early as November, depending on the response of employees and customers, John Simley, a company spokesman, confirmed.
The wardrobe change is the latest — and perhaps most visible — sign of a style initiative under way at the nation’s biggest retailer and its largest private-sector employer. Over the last several years, Wal-Mart has opened a trend-spotting office in Manhattan, bought advertisements in Vogue and created a line of urban fashions as it tries to improve its individual store sales, which have lagged behind that of its hipper rival, Target.
Skittish Wal-Mart executives, who said they had not yet planned on disclosing the test, played down the experimental uniform. But they conceded that the existing smocks and vests, emblazoned with the words “How may I help you?” are unlikely to survive much longer.
“The look could still change,” Mr. Simley said of the polos and khakis. “We are still in the process of testing this dress code and evaluating how or whether to roll it out to additional stores.”
The color of the polo shirt, in particular, may be modified — perhaps to avoid any confusion with the uniform at Best Buy, which as it happens, is a blue polo shirt and khaki pants. Best Buy even refers to its employees as Blue Shirts.
Stan Herman, who over a 30-year career in fashion has designed uniforms for dozens of corporations like JetBlue and Amtrak, said the polo and khaki look was “very classy.” The smock, he said, “is the lowest guppy in the pool” of fashion and, with the crisp-looking new dress code, “Wal-Mart will raise the status of 1.3 million Americans” who work for the chain.
But by drifting away from the smock and the vest — long emblems of the working class — Wal-Mart is also leaving behind a uniform that linked it, at least in the popular imagination, to its largest customer base.
“This is much more business casual” than working class, said Mr. Herman, who in the 1980’s introduced shorts to the uniform of Federal Express employees and the first cotton shirt at McDonald’s, which had long been wedded to 100 percent polyester tops.
Consumer companies have always viewed their employees as an extension of their brand name, and have dressed them accordingly. Employees at Southwest Airlines, for example, wear a polo shirt and sneakers to convey the company’s no-frills, discount culture. The salespeople at the teenage clothing chain Abercrombie & Fitch wear baggy pants and tight-fitting shirts to project the image of sex appeal and youth.
Taraynn Lloyd, director of marketing at Edwards Garment, a major uniform supplier in Michigan, suggested that Wal-Mart might be arriving a bit late to the polo party. Many companies that require uniforms are now moving away from polo shirts “toward a more tailored look” — namely, button-down, woven shirts.
Outfitting more than one million workers with new clothes could prove costly for the penny-pinching Wal-Mart. The retailer said it would supply each employee with two navy blue polo shirts (employees can substitute a dark blue dress shirt). The chain may eventually cover the cost of the khakis, too, but for now, workers must buy the pants, which retail for about $15 at Wal-Mart, on their own.
Some workers are not eager to dig into their own pockets to pay for the khaki pants. Aubretia Edick, who works at a Wal-Mart in Hudson, N.Y., said in an interview that the dress code was “very crisp” but questioned why she should have to buy her own pants if she does not normally wear khakis. “I am buying these pants for work, and that is it,” Ms. Edick said. She was referred by WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-backed group in touch with the company’s employees.
Wal-Mart began testing the clean-cut polo and khaki outfit a year ago at a handful of stores and has since introduced the look at every store the chain has opened since early September.
This is not the first time that Wal-Mart has altered its uniforms. Several years ago, the company replaced the phrase “Our People Make the Difference” on smocks with the question “How may I help you?” to reflect a growing emphasis on customer service.
The new shirts, Mr. Simley said, bear no such language, but large name tags will continue to identify employees as Wal-Mart staff.
The big question, said Mr. Herman, the uniform designer, is whether Wal-Mart will allow workers to leave the new polo shirts untucked — the sign of a casual, easy-going workplace.
Mr. Simley of Wal-Mart said the company wanted workers “to feel comfortable and confident in what they are wearing.”
“If they want to tuck it in they can,” he said. “If not, they can leave it out.”
