The Best Business Casual Dressing Guide You'll Ever Read
Business-Casual Style Tips
What Business-Casual Means Today
Like its name, business-casual in its strictest sense has been a mixed bag. It simply replaced one uniform (the suit) with another in polo shirts and chinos.
As an ethos, though, business-casual has been all-pervasive, thanks in part to California’s status as a manufacturer of clothing and culture. Then as now, tech companies were perceived as cutting edge; desperate to be seen as adopting best business practices and generally look hip, other companies quickly followed (no) suit.
Business-casual is taking over the world. As of 2017, ‘businesslike attire’ for members of parliament at the House of Commons doesn’t have to include ties, and the dress code for leaders at the G8 summit in 2013 was ‘smart-casual’.
Even banks are buying in: JP Morgan introduced ‘business-casual’ in 2016, despite employees’ concerns that they’d look like they had no clients to see. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, recently instituted a ‘casual’ dress code – but only for its tech staff, and with the caveat: “Please exercise judgement in determining when to adapt to business attire as circumstances dictate, particularly if you have a client meeting.”
This brings us perhaps to a working definition of business-casual in this non-conformist era: demonstrating creativity and enhancing your ‘personal brand’, while at the same time showing respect for your position, other people and yourself.
...more to come
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