穿着休闲也能表现对工作的尽职

　　Tina Wells, the 28-year-old founder and CEO of Buzz Marketing Group in Voorhees, N.J., wears a similarly broad high-to-low mix of brands to work. This includes mini dresses from Target, Chanel ballerina flats, and a lot of luxury denim. Like many of her generation, she defines her clothing by label: True Religion, Raven and Citizens of Humanity.

　　She founded her company, which serves clients that include Swarovski Group, at 16. 'I'm not a Harvard M.B.A.-type person,' Ms. Wells says. 'If I were just a girl in a suit, I think it wouldn't clearly demonstrate' the degree of sophistication her company has to offer, she says.

　　She hasn't thrown out all the traditional rules. Ms. Wells has banned certain lace tops and asked one intern to remove her chin-piercing for work, saying, 'I think we shouldn't scare the clients.'

　　Yet Ms. Wells has also rejected the below-the-knee skirts and neat matching sweaters suggested by her mother. 'The boomer generation -- they love those twin sets,' she says. 'I like cardigans, but not the set -- oh gosh, not the set.'

　　Avoiding an overly matchy-matchy look has become a generation-defining choice. It's as though matching jackets and skirts suggest an overreliance on parents' stiff fashion conventions. Cynthia Johnson, Derek Johnson's 52-year-old mother, notes, 'I was born in the '50s -- we had rules that you don't wear white after Sept. 30.'

　　When Mr. Johnson got his first professional job -- an internship in midtown New York City -- his parents bought him two $900 suits at Nordstrom. But Mr. Johnson declines to wear those suits, even as he meets with venture capitalists to raise money for Tatango. He says he wore one once to make a presentation, but he adds ruefully, 'I think I wasn't really myself.'