In New York, a female banker is taking her former employers to court over sacking her because she was ‘too attractive’.  Debrahlee Lorenzana is claiming that Citibank fired her because her pencil skirts and fitted suits were distracting male colleagues from their work.

According to her complaint, she was ordered not to wear high heels because they drew attention to her figure and stopped men from working, but female colleagues who wore similar clothes were not told to change their appearance because, according to Ms Lorenzana, they were less attractive than her. She was also given a list of the clothes her employer wanted her to stop wearing to the office – she was asked by her employer not to wear: turtleneck tops, pencil skirts, fitted business suits, or other properly tailored clothing and that she shouldn’t wear high heels either.

So what’s the law? Well it varies from country to country, but it is discriminatory to insist that people dress in a fashion that is different to their colleagues, so if everybody else is wearing casual clothing, you can’t insist one person dresses formally if they are doing the same job. On the other hand, work-specific clothing can be insisted on, particularly if people do jobs that have health or safety implications: catering staff must dress in a way that guarantees hygiene so aprons and hats are not just required but legally stipulated, and builders and other construction workers need to have safety clothing that protects them, and the public, from harm.

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