Are restaurant dress codes racist and no longer relevant? Black patron calls out double standard after incident

Charles “CJ” Pace was wearing a $60 pair of joggers from the upscale clothing store Zara, and, he said, an “expensive jacket and expensive sneakers.”

When he and his friend arrived at The Ashford, a restaurant and club in Jersey City, New Jersey, for a meal in early April, they were told by the bouncer they had to eat at an outdoor table because of the casual way Pace was dressed. Both Pace and his friend are Black.

Others were dining outdoors, so they agreed. But while they were waiting for their check, Pace said he “saw a group of white guys with baggy sweatpants and baggy hoodies get let in. The whole crew was wearing what I had got denied for.”

The specifics of The Ashford's dress code are unclear. There is no dress code listed on its website. A sign detailing the dress code used to hang in the establishment, but after it was called out for racist undertones in 2019, it was removed.

Pace, 26, who lives in Newark, New Jersey, and works as a model, YouTuber and social media influencer, took a video of the group. One man was wearing joggers, a backward baseball cap and a hoodie; another wore basketball shorts. The video went viral, with more than 700,000 views on Twitter.

This incident brought to the fore what many have been saying for years: dress codes are implicitly racist and target people of color.

Besides the issue of race, fashion, in general, historically tends toward comfort. The face of fine dining has been slowly changing for years, making dress codes in restaurants less prevalent.

And yet, others argue that dress codes merely ensure a certain standard, a way to help guarantee that the dining out experience is special, something more than a stop at the diner.

So where does that leave us? Depending on who you ask, dress codes are problematic or antiquated or all in good fun. Which begs the question: Are dress codes still relevant in today's restaurant industry?

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Racism disguised

D. Wendy Greene, professor at Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law and a legal expert on anti-discrimination law and policy, says dress codes are perforce discriminatory. Greene says that by "denying patrons access" to restaurants if they "do not comport with appearance and grooming norms, they (restaurants) are engaging in discrimination."

"A restaurateur may believe that they are not engaging in race discrimination because they do not exclude patrons of color," she added. "However, is their grooming policy aimed at or only enforced against certain types of people of color like Black men who wear braided hairstyles, hats or casual sportswear, for example?”

In Pace's case, he said he pointed out the dress code double standard to a nearby security guard who later identified himself as the “head of security.” Pace said the guard walked over to talk to the bouncer, but the group was still let in. That’s when he started recording.

“Just because I stepped out in joggers, I’m deemed as less-than,” said Pace. “When white people walk up with baggier sweatpants looking like they just came from the gym, it’s no problem.”

Pace then asked to speak to a manager. The manager comped the group a few drinks and said he would have a conversation with employees about the incident.

After Pace's video sparked outrage, The Ashford turned off its Instagram comments and released a statement.

“The Ashford and Six26 (the rooftop bar attached to The Ashford) has a multi-racial ownership group, employs a multi-racial team, and serves a multi-racial community. We are anti-racist,” the Instagram post said. “We will take action internally to ensure every team member meets this standard every day.”

Said Pace, “That statement was the same as when white people say they have Black friends."

Kenneth Caulfield and Jeff Lam, owners of The Ashford, did not respond to multiple calls for comment.

“I’m all for wanting to create a desired ambiance, but we can’t separate that from racism,” said Nevin Perkins, the founder of Black Men United and a Jersey City native.

Black Men United, a New Jersey-based organization created to boost education, resources and solidarity in the Black community, posted about The Ashford incident on its Instagram.

"Most dress codes are rooted in cultural racism because the people who are most likely to be wearing the banned attire are people of color," said Perkins.

The complexities of fashion

Fashion, in general, is inextricable from culture and gender. What is considered formal and acceptable varies greatly depending on where you're from, said Abby Lillethun, professor of fashion culture and histories at Montclair State University and the chairperson for the Department of Art and Design.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, intricately patterned batik cloth is considered formal. In Africa, people will often dress up in fabrics that link back to textiles produced by their ancestral tribe.

Even what we now consider fashionable in the United States didn't originate here, said Lillethun. Coat jackets and trousers were developed in Central Asia to facilitate horseback riding.

“The fashion standard we think of as being Western often comes from somewhere else,” she said. “And the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) population generally leads us in fashion. They’re absolutely the early adopters of where we’re headed in fashion.”

Fashion and "formalwear" are regularly in flux and ultimately nudged along into modernity by public opinion. In their time, both Sammy Davis Jr.'s turtlenecks (a style adapted from the Nehru collar popular in Indian clothing) and Lauren Bacall's trousers were considered shocking, then revolutionary, then accepted as fashionable, said Lillethun.

Requiring women to wear dresses can be seen as sexist; men to wear ties and suits as elitist, say critics of dress codes.

“In the '70s, women who wanted to wear trousers weren’t admitted into restaurants," said Lillethun. "But, the public had already made the decision that it was acceptable. Restaurants had to follow suit."

The future is comfortable

Over time, we trend toward comfort in fashion anyway, said Lillethun. She recalls an instance when fashion designer Bill Blass, who glamorized and designed high-quality sportswear, posed for a publicity photo with a man who worked as a bicycle messenger. The man was wearing casual biking clothes and a colorful scarf.

"Bill Blass said, 'This is the future.' And he was right," said Lillethun.

It isn't that long ago when people would dress up to go out – to a restaurant, the theater, a dinner party. Today, Broadway theatergoers show up in jeans and T-shirts and people run their errands in gym clothes. Suits and formal dresses are, typically, reserved for weddings and funerals.

The idea of a man being loaned a formal jacket by a restaurant for an evening meal if he showed up without one – a practice common a generation or two ago at upmarket restaurants – is preposterous to many diners.

Nanni Ristorante in Rochelle Park has a sign on its door that declares "Proper Attire Required." The sign was installed 30 years ago when suit jackets and cocktail dresses were standard. But today casual dress is acceptable, said Robert Moreira, son of Manny Moreira, who owns Nanni with Lino Queirolo. The sign is merely a relic of a more formal time.

In other words, times have changed.

In the past decade, top chefs and restauranteurs have begun serving high-quality food in casual settings. One of the first was David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar in Manhattan, which opened in 2004. Even outwardly fancy restaurants are avoiding dress codes. The opulent new restaurant Carne Mare, an Italian Chophouse by acclaimed chef Andrew Carmellini decorated with plush leather seating and gorgeous views of the New York City Seaport, does not have a dress code.

For the love of fine dining

But there’s another school of thought. One that says people crave fine dining experiences; that when every customer is dressed to impress, the ambiance becomes more elegant and refined.

"People want to look sophisticated," said Paula Bernstein, vice president of private events and marketing communications of David Burke Hospitality Management. “Being dressed up brings a certain energy with it.”

Every restaurant in New Jersey attached to chef and restaurateur David Burke has a “business-casual” dress code, said Bernstein – with one exception: the casual Beach Haus Bar & Grill by David Burke in Belmar.

The term "business casual" is admittedly ambiguous.

Stephane Bocket, owner of fine French restaurant Chez Catherine in Westfield, New Jersey, which employs a business casual dress code, describes it as “what someone would wear on a cool Friday at the office”: slacks, jackets, dresses, skirts, possibly a tie, though not everyone works in an office or for that matter wears pressed slacks or a tie in their office.

He admits that, since it opened in 1979, Chez Catherine has never enforced its dress code.

Bocket said he's seen every kind of dress at Chez Catherine, but he has never stopped anyone from coming in based on what they're wearing.

“I understand if they don’t want to get dressed up for dinner and want to relax," he said. "But I’d prefer not to see someone in a tank top.”

Still, he said, a dress code, "sets a tone. It sets the bar a bit higher.” Besides, he added, most customers, if clearly not all, don't show up in torn jeans and a scruffy T-shirt.

Asked whether he thinks dress codes are implicitly racist, Bocket said he's seen more white people disregard the dress code at Chez Catherine than people of color. “My policy is not about color. It’s across the board."

Double standards

Pace said he had no initial problem with the dress code at The Ashford, and agreed to sit outside per the rules. It was the double standard that sparked his outrage. “I’m glad I used my voice about this," he said.

Greene believes that dress codes won't disappear overnight, as business owners are legally allowed to "dictate who can enter and patronize their establishment."

However, Greene said, "I am observing new restaurateurs as they are developing workplace policies. They are thinking more critically about the consequences of dress codes and thereby better appreciating that even though they may have a legal right to enforce grooming policies and they are very much the norm in the restaurant industry, the negative costs of grooming codes' discrimination outweigh the perceived benefits."

The Ashford, for example, first had dress code grievances raised about it in 2019.

The restaurant posted a sign stating its dress code banned oversized jeans and shirts, headgear, ball caps, work boots, gym sneakers, shorts or athletic apparel, sweatpants or joggers, cargo pants, oversized jewelry and chains, sunglasses, camouflage, low or baggy pants and headphones. Critics said the dress code disallowed fashion primarily worn by Black patrons. Caulfield told NJ Advanced Media it was “an oversight."

Another dress code issue occurred at Jersey City's Surf City in June 2020.

Maya Murphy, a resident of New Jersey, blasted the waterside bar after the dress code was brought up at her job interview. Murphy, who is white, wrote a Facebook post that went viral, claiming that at the interview she was told by her interviewer, "The demographic shift that happened at (the restaurant), we can't have that here. We have a dress code, we enforce it ... Do you get it?"

Murphy said the "demographic shift" the interviewer was referring to was an increase in patrons of color. The "we can't have that here," a covert message to discourage Black customers from coming to the bar.

Surf City issued an apology stating, "We have made mistakes. We are listening and always learning. In the coming months, Surf City will review our staff, our organizational structures, and our culture through a lens of racial equity.”

Now, on the FAQ section of the Surf City website, the question, “Is there a dress code?” is answered with an emphatic “No.”

Rebecca King is a food writer for NorthJersey.com. Email: kingr@northjersey.com. Twitter: @rebeccakingnj. Instagram: @northjerseyeats

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Restaurant dress code raises questions about racism, relevancy