Originally Posted by Miles Heighway
Umm.
There is a line here, and the line is not "dress-code". The line is "obtrusivenes".
If someone is paying for a ticket, like some pax has stated, they can well dress whatever they want as long as they don't intrude into others personal space (like listening to loud audio would for example). If you don't want to look at somebody's clothes with holes and missing buttons, then you are out of luck unless clever scientists invent a cloaking device. People are not going to dress for your benefit.
Also, it is dangerous to judge people by the clothes they wear (cue the axiom about books and covers), *in any situation*. I fly with sweaters with a hole or two sometimes; they are my favourite clothing and I feel most comfortable in them, especially when I have to do one of those multi leg 36 hour trips from US to a little jungle village in Borneo.
Right, we can always find exceptions to the idea that people can look presentable if we want. Yet we wouldn't question that there's a certain attire that would be out of place in a restarant of even modest quality. The expression in the restarant business is that it's not the steak they're selling, it's the sizzle. Different audiences have different ideas of what the best sizzle is, so we have restarants of all manner of styles & qualities.
Over time, there may be a tendancy to let standards slide. It happens gradually, and doesn't seem like a terribly evil thing. It may even seem like a good thing... hey, let's be more inclusive and less stuffy. But I don't think it takes much scrutiny to see the results, and consider that they may affect passenger's perception of the level of service being offered.