Back in my high school days, before the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel, society was governed by time-honored rules, developed over thousands of years of managing human behavior. Breaking those rules had consequences. One of those rule sets, known to all Boomer students, was the county-wide public-school dress code. Collared shirts, socks, no shorts, no sandals or open-toed shoes, no sneakers, no jeans, no hats, no tattoos. If your pants had belt loops, you had better have a belt in them and your shirt tucked in. Boys had to be clean-cut. Girls were required to wear modest dresses or skirts. No slacks. You were part of a team. I remember our Dean of Boys, Luke Thornton, checking the length of my sideburns with a wooden ruler, mid-ear, handing me a razor, and sending me to the boy’s restroom for compliance. Imagine that: A restroom for boys only. Luke Thornton was a wonderful, tough southern educator, straight out of the Glades. If you followed the rules, he could be your best friend. Cross him, and your life would be pure hell. The way we all looked and dressed was damn important to Dean Thornton and the school board. We were required to look respectable and ready to get to work in our academic career while preparing for the jungle of life that lay before us. I suppose that eventually became a violation of our civil rights, which has brought us to where we are now: just about anything goes.

You can tell a lot about a person by just looking at her or him. Teeth, hair, posture, gate, and certainly, wardrobe. These are indicators in our culture that help to predict behavior and perspective. Here at the yard, I get an education in visual sociology every day. Some folks are no-nonsense and unpretentious, some are all about the show, and some just look like hell. We don’t see much “show” on the boatyard crew. The show is primarily reserved for yacht brokers, surveyors, and coddled applicants looking for an HR office. The show in boat building comes with the delivery of the product. To get there, most of us get pretty dirty by the end of the day. With a few exceptions, the ones that get dirty are the most reliable. The mechanics smeared with grease and Tef-Gel and smelling like Permatex. The painters smeared with spar varnish and Evercoat and smelling like acrylic urethane. The carpenters smeared with contact cement and epoxy and smelling like Meranti sawdust. The electricians smeared with wire lube and smelling like hot heat-shrink and solder. This is not white collar. Curiously, for the most part, there isn’t a collar at all. What happened to traditional collared work shirts? Will they soon suffer a similar demise as punctuality, productivity, and pride?

When I went to work in the family business, work clothes were standard issue. Every crew member wore long work pants, mechanic-blue or khaki, your choice. Work shirts were mostly collared, and all bore the company logo. Some, like my dad and my cousin JJ, wore a logoed Rybovich t-shirt to help them cope with the heat of a tight, hot engine room. Uncle Tommy wore a collared, straight-hem, Rybovich & Sons work shirt. Everyone in the yard, including boat crew, had the Rybovich name on their shirt except Uncle Johnny. Johnny routinely wore a short-sleeve button down, neatly tucked in, usually in generic plaid, or a straight-hem, four-pocket Guayabera. Boat captains wore long, khaki pants, long-sleeve shirts, and canvas Sperry Topsiders with socks, to shield them from the tropical sun. We stocked and sold Sperry Topsiders in the parts room (in blue and khaki) so all would have access to appropriate boat footwear. Florida dermatologists now thrive on an inexhaustible supply of Cryo-Surgery and Mohs patients who have decided that shorts, T-shirts, and sandals are the way to dress for boating.

When you walk through our yard today, it’s a mixed bag. Alvin, Bill, Brian, Frank, and I are the old-school, work-shirt fossils. Button down, two pockets, white, mechanic-blue, or khaki. When my brother, Marty, was with us, he was a button-down, two-pocket work shirt guy as well, but with a humorous twist which has always been one of his many endearing attributes. Marty bought all his work shirts at Thrift Stores and yard sales. The shirts invariably had the logo of some random business and an employee name above the pockets. One day he’d be Jimmy from ServePro. The next day he was Steve from Waste Management. Day after that he was Carlos from Jiffy Lube. We had a lot of fun with that. He figured that after a few weeks, the shirts were all full of epoxy and indelible stains from a sweat and sawdust puree. You can’t put that laundry in with anything else. Why pay more than fifty cents for a shirt? Why not recycle discarded attire and reduce your carbon footprint? Sound logic, economical, environmentally friendly, and highly entertaining. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good definition of my brother. The boys and girls on the crew now take casual to the outer reaches of the galaxy. I understand that in today’s culture, comfort and trends beat protection hands down, but where will it all end? I swear, some of them work in their pajamas. In addition to the staggeringly casual approach, there is the “competition’s” shirt quandary. No offense, Uncle Roy, but it’s a bit awkward when the IGFA tours come through and several of the guys on the hull crew and half the boat captains are wearing Merritt t-shirts! I have a drawer full of t-shirts from my boat-building compadres. I enjoy wearing them off campus and am proud to celebrate the diverse custom boat gospel according to the other disciples. After all, the big man told us to love one another and spread the word. Here in our yard, I feel like we need to represent us and our place at the table. I suppose the shrinks would say that my insecurities are showing. Damn, not again!

We had a great uniform service at the old yard, and the time and energy saved with the service was well worth the minimal cost. Along with the savings of time and energy comes the professional look a uniform gives to any organization. It is an outward sign of legitimacy and teamwork, like a sports franchise, a police department, a nursing staff, or an army. A uniform makes one part of something bigger than the individual. Unfortunately, we were forced to discontinue uniform services here. I suppose those companies are suffering from the same human-resource challenges in the 2020s that frustrate us and everyone else. The last two services with which we dealt just couldn’t ever get it right. Every week we were shorted on shirts, pants, or both. Frequently, shirts from other businesses were delivered and sat on the rack, never to be reclaimed. This would have been a gold mine for Marty, had he not retired. After a while, our crew threw in the towel and dressed themselves. I can’t blame them. Today, it’s mostly minimal beach attire with an occasional thong. You know … the same way people now dress for commercial air travel.

The old adage that the job defines the man has become as toxic as masculinity and patriotism. Mossbacks, such as I, still believe it to be true. Regardless of your preferred side of the isle, any conversation with a new acquaintance eventually gets around to “What do you do?” What you do all day defines you, whether you’re a doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief (oops, I meant Indigenous Managing Director), or retiree. What is it that gives or gave you the ability to survive on this planet? Husband, wife, father, mother, sister, brother, are all incredibly important roles, but what do you do to facilitate those assignments? You go to work. Prior to the “me” revolution, the job defined the man or woman, and the uniform defined the job. Work clothes were an essential part of our culture when things made sense. Now, as in our public schools, all long-established guidelines have been blurred or erased in the name of individual expression. As you walk through the yard, you can’t tell an employee from a boat captain, a vendor, or a visitor. As for me, I buy my uniforms now. Actually, my wife buys them for me and has them embroidered with my name and our logo. It’s still important to me to at least look like I work here and give a damn. The rest of them can wear whatever they want but when I’m at work, like Tommy Malone (from The Subdudes, one of my favorite bands) sang on their Street Symphony album, “I’ve got my work clothes on.” Hell, you never know when Luke Thornton might come around the corner with his whack stick. “Tuck that shirt in, Rybovich!”

This article originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.