Business: FASHION SHOW IN THE OFFICE

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BUSINESSMEN tend to be much more interested in what's new in finance than in fashion. Yet few companies remain untouched by today's uninhibited styles in dress and grooming. The swinging look, long confined to with-it secretaries, is fast spreading to other employees, men and women alike. In many offices and executive suites, business greys are giving way to the bolder hues of the boutique. For every stuffed shirt still around, for example, a freer spirit at the next desk is likely to be wearing a striped or even a paisley one. "Business is permitting far more latitude in dress than it did five years ago," says Sherrie Rubin, a field representative for Los Angeles' Western Girl Inc. employment agency.

Sprouting Sideburns. Men's turtleneck sweaters and Nehru jackets, while still the exception, are showing up in more and more offices. Engineers at Hughes Tool Co. not only wear turtlenecks but also sport luxuriant beards and mustaches. At Ealing Corp., a learning-systems and optics company in Cambridge, Mass., President Paul D. Grindle thinks nothing of going to work wearing shimmering green slacks with a red silk shirt, welcomes similar flamboyance in his employees. "The mini-er the better," he says. "People seem snappier, jazzier and zippier when dressed in mod styles."

Even the most tradition-bound companies are now loosening up on what their employees wear. Detroit's decorous J. L. Hudson Co. department store has begun allowing salesmen to wear sport coats instead of suits. Xerox insists on tonsorial tidiness, but it has permitted one of its California service technicians to affect a handlebar mustache because "it looks quite sophisticated on him." At Jersey Standard, well-cultivated sideburns are sprouting at the middle-management level. IBM, long a bastion of conservatism, has relaxed its unwritten requirement that men wear white shirts only, even though it is far from ready for the Nehru jacket.

Such liberalization often reflects the tightness and youthfulness of today's labor market. When a young woman fresh out of college takes a job, notes a secretary at Lawyers Title Insurance Corp. in Washington, she often owns nothing but miniskirts. "The men huff and puff, and the old maids grimace, but what are you going to do?" Another factor is the influx of Negro and Spanish-speaking workers, many of whom are less inhibited by convention, thus dress with more flair.

Measuring a Jellyfish. Most companies, however, continue to maintain at least some rules of dress, particularly for those employees dealing directly with the public. American Airlines has begun allowing its telephone girls to wear mufti, but still specifies clean-lined blue uniforms for those at the front desk. At most brokerage houses, securities salesmen are expected to dress conservatively. Far more freedom is given to back-office clerical workers, who are even more out of sight, both literally and figuratively, now that they are buried behind piles of paper work.