Historically, have norms around women's professional attire been driven by men? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Historically, have norms around women's professional attire been driven by men? Yes, 100%. As with most industries, fashion executives are primarily male. In my opinion, it’s one of the reasons, functionality has been so overlooked when it comes to workwear. We’ve been forced to endure the “shrink and pink” model for too long - for those who don’t know what that means, historically men’s clothes (suiting) has been shrunken and made pink to be appropriate for women. And don’t even get me started on lack of pockets.

To make matters worse, dress codes are incredibly unclear these days. Women are told to "cover up" or "wear heels" or, my favorite, to “wear something comparable to the male dress code.” The list goes on and on. These vague rules fall in a grey area that becomes not only distracting from the actual work at hand, but forces women to constantly second-guess their style choices. Women are penalized in the world of subjective dress codes, and institutions attempting to enforce them are not clear on what’s acceptable.

We started Argent because we see a massive gap in the availability of work attire that crosses the divide between office appropriate and personal style. Argent was born from a need. We want to create a line of clothing for emerging female leaders that has both personality and functionality. Our goal is to eliminate all of the office attire guesswork and arm women with confidence. Period.

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

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* Business Attire: What does the future of professional women's attire look like?

* The Workplace: How has the move to more casual clothing in the workplace, particularly in Silicon Valley, affected women?

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