Over the course of my career, I saw the corporate dress code go from button-downed/buttoned up to pretty much anything goes. This was, of course, before work from home was much of a thing, so I never worked in a "pants-optional" environment.
Still, there were standards of sorts, and certain things were frowned on. One colleague (not surprisingly, a techie) showed up one day in a pair of cut-offs that barely covered his junk. He completed his ensemble with a pale yellow shirt that looked suspiciously like a pajama top. His shirt/PJ top had a number of small holes in it, and the back was enhanced by what appeared to be flecks of blood. He was read the riot act by pretty much everyone whose path he crossed that day, and from that day on, pulled his socks up, metaphorically.
My career was in high tech, which was notoriously leading- edge when it came to informal work garb. I worked at one place that had a "corporate tie," which the execs would put on if they were called in (unplanned) to a client meeting.
Other places I worked were dressier. At Wang, the techies - as I recall - wore collared shirts and maybe a tie. But the folks in product management and marketing, as I was, wore suits every day. (This was in the day of the menswear suit for women, worn with a menswear shirt with floppy bowtie or a silk shirt with a pussy bow.)
All in all, as time wore on, dress codes at work because less and less that of the prior generation, when white collar men wore suits, and pink collar women wore suits or dresses.
Even as dressing down became more common, I was never much of a jeans-at-work person. Over the years, I eventually gravitated towards pants or skirt worn with a sweater or shirt and jacket. Men (other than techies) wore khakis and a polo or collared shirts, maybe with a navy blue blazer. All of this came under what we thought of as the business casual category.
The work world is now a different place - even in the downtown precincts where suits were pretty much de rigueur. The man in the gray flannel suit? He's no more.
And downtown folks are apparently grappling with just what business casual means. As local stylist Tara West has observed.
It’s particularly confounding for clients who traditionally have operated in a conservative suit-and-tie business environment, West says.
“It’s: What do I do? How do I dress? And how do I feel comfortable and show up in the right way?” says West, who runs an eponymous fashion styling company. “People get stumped, especially now, on what is too casual and what is right.” (Source: Boston Globe)
It doesn't sound like any formerly-formal places are moving to "anything goes." If jeans are okay, it's non-ripped jeans. If sneakers are okay, they're Allbirds.
The relaxation of the corporate dress code is largely happening because the rising generations in the workforce expect it. The ability to dress down is seen as a means to recruit and retain employees.
Beyond wanting to remain an attractive place to work, however, the shift toward a less-formal dress code allows employers to be more inclusive of gender-fluid workers, those with disabilities, and a multigenerational workforce.
“Dress is now a variable in workplace culture in ways they couldn’t have imagined a century ago,” Clemente says. “It’s individuality, personal expression, ethnicity, sexual identity. . . . Those are protected spaces.”
All this is bad news for the likes of retailers like Jos. Banks and Brooks Brothers. And folks can no longer fall back on the old get-Dad-another-tie-for-Father's Day habit. Plus it's not good news for dry cleaners, either. Dockers and jeans go in the washing machine. But informal dress at work is good news for the athleisure market, which is growing crazily.
The bottom line is flexibility, self-expression, accommodation, use your judgement, un-relax as needed. For CarGurus, a local tech company, they have "explicitly...'no dress code dress code.'
I'm all for it. As long as no one shows up with a junk-revealing cut-offs and blood-flecked PJ tops...
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