The clothes are part of the judgment of the mind. Clothes also help determine if someone will fit into a particular institution. Not to mention the fact that individual universities have their own idiosyncratic norms, which professors ignore at their peril. Perhaps the biggest liability of looking too good is that colleagues and students may spend more time thinking about what a professor wears than what he or she says. When clothes become a distraction, the frumpiness faction contends, they do a disservice to young scholars who are trying to establish themselves in their field.
Men occasionally take flak for putting too much of a premium on their own appearance.
The outfit made him a legend in some eyes and a laughingstock in others. It translates into a perception that they're not otherworldly, that they don't live in ivory towers, that they meet people where they are rather than tell them where they ought to be. It didn't even land him a job. Dressing fashionably in academia is like clearing the four-foot high jump. Mr. Berube may know whereof he speaks.