Americans not only think of business as warfare, borrowing from Sun-tzu, Musashi and Attila the Hun, they also dress for it. Take your average foot soldier barreling out of Grand Central at rush hour: from his head to his toes, his uniform has been modeled by war. Consider the tie he wears. Four hundred years ago, it was called a cravat, after the 17th-century Croatian mercenaries who wore them on the battlefields of France. Chances are good our man's tie is a regimental stripe, whose colors originally connoted an officer's regiment, though now they could mean membership in anything from a country club to a bowling league. A typical man's shoe is called a blucher, from the Prussian General Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, who battled Napoleon. Though defeated at Lubeck in 1806, Blucher survived to wear his namesakes to the battle of Waterloo.

Modern outerwear and warfare is an even closer fit. Our commuter's trench coat has broad pockets, a removable lining and shoulder flaps, which made the coat highly practical for the British officers who wore them in Flanders during World War I. Those vestigial brass loops on the belt are actually grenade hooks. And that wristwatch our commuter anxiously consults is another military improvement (circa 1914) over the vest pocket watch then in popular use.

Suppose our commuter is more casually attired in a blazer and khakis. The original blazer debuted on the British Naval ship, the H.M.S. Blazer, in the 1860's. Our commuter's button-down collar originated on the polo fields of Manipur, where British officers are said to have invented the game. And khakis, derived from the uniforms the Brits wore in India (in Hindi the word means "dust" ) caught on with young vets returning to college after World War II.

As Anne Hollander notes in "Sex and Suits," the origin of the tailored suit can be traced all the way back to the linen padding meant to be worn under a suit of armor. Men's coats are said to unbutton on the left, so that a right-handed man could reach his sword more easily, and later his six-shooter. Amazingly, the gesture endures today, each time a businessman reaches for his fountain pen, complete with scabbard and jeweled hilt. All of which brings to mind the words of Woody Guthrie in his ode to Pretty Boy Floyd: "Well, it's through this world I ramble/I've seen lots of funny men/Some will rob you with a six gun/And some with a fountain pen."