To get its new uniform groove on, McDonald’s is courting teen brands such as Sean Jean, Phat Farm and Abercrombie & Fitch to create a hipper look for its employees.
Just imagine: guys in a pair of roomy Phat Farm denim shorts, a polo shirt decorated with a wide chest stripe, a baseball cap embroidered with a huge golden-arches logo and sneakers. Girls in an Abercrombie tank, hoodie and low-slung jeans.
Cool.
Could this make the 600,000 employees of Mickey D’s say, “Would you like fries with that?” with an even wider smile?
Could this inspire the employers of about 30 million Americans who wear work uniforms to make fashion changes?
New uniforms for the nation’s largest fast- food chain won’t be revealed until at least early 2006, but change is part of McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” advertising campaign. The company updated its menu and marketing message, and now it wants New York brand marketer Steve Stoute to transform its uniforms into fashion statements.
Stoute connected McDonald’s and Justin Timberlake (who recorded “I’m Lovin’ It”), and now is the go-to guy to chat up high-profile fashion masters. (We understand he’s also contacting Tommy Hilfiger and American Eagle Outfitters about designing uniforms.)
Other than McDonald’s goal of making the outfits more fashionable and youthful, the fast-food chain has no preconceived ideas about what style or colors the new uniforms will take, says Bill Whitman, McDonald’s spokesman.
“We would like to see the crew attire as a source of pride that our employees want to wear as opposed to what they have to wear,” he adds.
We talked to employees at a local McDonald’s who said they’d appreciate styles that are more form-fitting but still comfortable. Like wearing shorts sans the pantyhose the current dress code requires. Or wearing bigger, bolder logos on their uniforms.
McDonald’s joins a growing list of fashion companies seeking name-brand designers to help them craft a new look.
Partnerships have included Los Angeles couturier Richard Tyler and Delta Airlines, Kate Spade of handbag fame and Song Airlines, and Kenneth Cole for W Hotels. Roberto Cavalli, an Italian known for his sexy style, recently was tapped to redesign the Playboy bunny uniform.
Function needs to be an overriding concern, despite the fresh approach designers can bring to the world of uniforms, says Donna J. Pierson, director of marketing and communications for the National Association of Uniform Manufacturers and Designers.
“They have to fit many body shapes and understand the fabric choices. It doesn’t matter if Donna Karan designed it; if it doesn’t function, it’s useless,” Pierson says.
While wearing hipper clothes may make employees stand a little taller as they work the line, teens may not consider it cool to wear a uniform when off-duty.
“It’s a noble effort to try to please the kids who are working there, but in America, especially with the younger kids, the last thing they want to look like is a McDonald’s employee, or a Burger King or Wendy’s employee,” says Stan Herman, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and a New York-based designer who has created uniforms for UPS, FedEx, Jet Blue and McDonald’s.
“In Europe, even the sanitation workers are proud of their blues,” but Americans prize their individuality too much to want to wear their uniforms off the job, Herman says.
Uniforms that tend to earn our respect are those worn by safety workers, such as police and firefighters; people in the military and health care; and to a somewhat lesser extent, travel fields such as airlines and trains. Uniforms worn by service workers, such as those at restaurants and retail, aren’t as highly valued.
The smartest thing McDonald’s could do is separate itself from the competition and look completely different from the other fast-food chains, Herman says. “It’s exciting that they are thinking in these terms,” he says. “They have to move away from the box.”
Pierson says she was surprised McDonald’s was changing uniforms, since the current design won an Image of the Year award in 2004.
“I thought it was a neat uniform for the food industry,” she said, adding that fast-food restaurants tend to change menus and uniforms every three to five years.
Some 31 million Americans wear uniforms, according to Made to Measure magazine. That number is on the rise, Pierson says, citing banking as an industry turning to uniforms to give its staff a more professional appearance.
Young clerks, for example, have grown up wearing casual clothes and don’t know how to dress professionally, while sometimes older workers put off buying newer, more fashionable clothing.
Pierson says whatever design McDonald’s comes up with for its uniforms has to be better than what she wore in the 1970s as a teen working at a McDonald’s in Indiana.
“We wore rusty brown elastic-topped pants and a jacket with metal buttons down the front,” Pierson says. “It was a heavy polyester that was hot in the summer and not warm enough in the winter. But nothing stuck to it and when it came out of the dryer it was wrinkle-free. I wouldn’t call it overly attractive.”
Staff writer Suzanne S. Brown can be reached at 303-820-1697 or sbrown@denverpost.com.
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Who wears
uniforms?
An estimated 1 in 4 American employees wears a uniform on the job, and uniforms are an $8 billion to $12 billion industry annually. Rick Levine, publisher of Made to Measure magazine, looked at 2000 Census figures and broke out the uniform statistics this way:
9.9 million
Food preparation
and serving –
Wait staff, servers, counter attendants
9.5 million
Transportation –
Pilots, bus drivers,
railroad and delivery
personnel
6 million
Health care
and technical –
Doctors, nurses, therapists,
administrators,
paramedics
3 million
Security service –
Police, sheriff’s officers firefighters, security guards
2.7 million
Personal care
and service –
Flight attendants,
gaming dealers, ushers, bellhops
Total: 31 million
Source:
Made to Measure,
U.S. Department of
Labor, 2000 Census
