When Derek Johnson was interviewing candidates for a marketing job at his tech company, one applicant arrived in a business suit. "It put us on edge," says Mr. Johnson, founder and CEO of Tatango.com. Mr. Johnson believed the job candidate was presenting a false image of himself. The suit, he felt, was tantamount to a lie.

Mr. Johnson is 22 -- an entrepreneur who dropped out of college when it got in the way of running Tatango, which enables groups to blast text and voice messages to their members. Like many of his generation, he sees traditional business attire as a form of cover-up. In his workplace, he says, "we're not trying to hide anything with our clothes."

Established companies have long hired employees whose clothing suggested they would toe the corporate line. Today, many young managers believe office attire should do pretty much the opposite: express a person's inner soul.

To older people, young people's style can be difficult to understand. Going far beyond business casual, the clothes seem either highly informal or provocatively young -- jeans, athletic shoes, tight T-shirts and miniskirts, for instance.

But young workers are replacing traditional business dress with their own complex sets of rules and subliminal messages. Their choices among brand-name items are meant to communicate substance. Rather than Gucci versus Allen Edmonds, for instance, the choice may involve Nike Air Force versus Chuck Taylors. (Read: urban vs. surfer.)