New York Cabdrivers’ Dress Code Gets an Update - NYTimes.com

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Published: November 25, 2010

"The earliest New York cabbies wore immaculate uniforms modeled after cadet clothes at West Point. By 1925, the city required cabbies to wear a knitted cap, white linen collared shirt, coat and necktie. Drivers were also expected to be “temperamentally fitted for the job,” according to the book “Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver.”

That book’s author, Graham Hodges, a former cabby himself, said he once drove his taxi shirtless on a particularly hot summer day in the 1970s. His excuse? No air-conditioning. “I was told by a cabby that if I didn’t put a shirt on, I’d get a ticket,” he recalled on the telephone recently."