What to wear? What to wear? It all used to be so simple for office workers: formal suits for men and below-the-knee skirts, tailored suits and silk blouses for women. Now, office style is a disparate mix of denim, designer sneakers, athleisure and that one guy who still insists on wearing a three piece suit and pocket square.
If you pay the slightest attention to what people wear in the office, you’ve surely noticed how men’s & women business attire has changed over the years. Men’s office wear is now a lot more casual than ever before. That’s mostly thanks to the IT department and changing trends, also corporate giants like Goldman Sachs who made headlines by announcing relaxing dress code to be more “flexible.”
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: dressing business casual doesn’t have to be expensive. While you can spend a lot of money on designer pieces and luxury items if you want to, you don’t necessarily have to. In general, business casual means a slightly more relaxed version of your usual business professional style. If your usual business attire is a suit and tie, it means that you can leave your tie at home on Fridays and roll up your sleeves if you take off your jacket. You can take things a bit further in some companies and swap your suit trousers for chinos or mix and match your jacket. Denim jeans should generally not be worn as part of your casual business attire to be on the safe side, but if you do want to wear jeans, opt for a neat well-fitting cut. Traditional colours of black, white, and brown remain in the corporate sector always, and mix well with the other accessories. Feminine colours like ice blue, soft pink, ivory, and lilac are also in vogue.
Double Breasted Suits were a fixature of eighties, but today is time to dial things back and up. A plain DB is less of a statement than a patterned Suit but still a cut above your average two piece. It will surely flatter your physique. With a bit of know-how and gumption to pull off, it’s a look that can skew classic or contemporary, corporate or creative.
The only types of shirt most men are familiar with are White and Blue, however expanding your horizons with color and patterns like stripes, checks, florals and geometry can give your look the promotion that it deserves. Maybe ‘fancy’ neckwear is too stiff for your workplace. Either way, your options are more open than an open-necked OCBD (that’s Oxford collar button-down, by the way). A grandad or band collar shirt (also sometimes called ‘collarless’, confusingly) will make you look like you’ve got your finger on the pulse of style, and not like you forgot your tie.
A good piece of workwear puts in a shift if you want to assert your old-school masculine credentials. In twill chinos, quality craftsmanship meets reliability and style in a perfect menage a trews of cool that’s still exceptionally wearable. Contrary to its sometimes stuffy connotations, corduroy is brilliant when dressed down and worn casually. Try teaming a pair of dark corduroy trousers with a sweatshirt and practical leather sneakers to signpost that you’re not actually a fellow at Oxbridge. Also try them as part of a linen suit for a dapper old-timer vibe, but the more modern way to wear them is cropped, with sneakers and a solid colour shirt and blazer. These days, drawstring trousers come tailored and in a lot more materials than jersey. Wool and linen offer the best options at the smarter end of the spectrum. Once you’ve felt how comfortable your dressed-up wardrobe can be, you’ll never go back.
Put a tie as an opportunity to express your individuality (solid colors like pink, orange, mustard, olive, turquoise) as well as florals. It can instantly make you more noteworthy.
You could upgrade to a luxe backpack, but even that might be too kiddy for grown-up jobs; and without thorough thought, hard briefcases can be a tad stuffy, not to mention difficult to dress down. Document holders can look slick; they can also look affected and aren’t much use for carrying much else.
Going for a blazer and chinos instead of a suit, or wearing sneakers instead of dress shoes, are both good ways to turn down the formality on tailoring, but nothing is simpler than just swapping out your button-down shirt and tie for something more low-key. T-shirts in the summer, crewneck sweaters in the winter, knit polos any day of the year. A casual button down like a denim shirt also works; it even has a collar.