Well, we can certainly go the Jeremiad route (there are plenty of etiquette mavens who do) and decry the degradation of the standard, but surely you must admit that at some point, if a majority of people consider a particular outfit semiformal or business casual, then that’s semiformal or business casual.
If I were attending a conference or some other get-together that I was not familiar with and it specified business casual, I would assume that means a blazer is not necessary but I’d wear dress slacks, a dress shirt, and keep a tie on hand just in case. But I wouldn’t be doing it because I felt it was more professional or anything. I’d do it because the even svens, ravenmans, stratocasters and punditlisas would be a pain in my neck about it.
I’m in an entirely different environment now but back when I was a cubicle dweller a shirt that was not tucked would be a no-no on casual Friday. But personally it looks fine.
At my office, a guy who wore that shirt with a pair of Dockers wouldn’t stand out, and wouldn’t get any hints (let alone orders) to start dressing better.
I agree, the blazer seems to have become a bit of a wild card. Where I work, I think that’s mainly because for the most part, any jacket gets put on a hanger behind your office door as soon as you get there. So even when suits are expected, except for certain meetings, it’s no problem to show up without your jacket. By extension, the blazer has not been seen as “required” mainly because it’s not worn throughout the day anyway.
That said, I wear one to be safe if I think any disrespect would be inferred if I didn’t.
I see a lot of people in this thread misunderstanding the question, frankly (not you). The question is NOT whether or not you take offense to this shirt, or if your place would think it was fine, or anything other than: “Does this fit the definition of business casual?” In my circles, the answer is “no.” I say that acknowledging that the definition is not universally agreed upon, but for the most part, the minimum is a tucked-in, button-down shirt, with slacks or khakis, plus “nice” shoes (loafers would suffice–no sneakers).
What job do you have where dressing poorly is more important than the work performed? If you guys go around mocking people for wearing chinos (pants that are still casual anyway for the record) you sound as petty as all the people you’re complaining about.
Well, to be fair, I did initially respond as “yeah, I hate the shirt, but noplace I’ve worked in the last 10 years would find it inappropriate”.
But I think the reason you are getting responses you don’t agree with is because of a) differences between jobs/industries, and b) that the very definition of “business casual” has evolved in the past 15 years.
When I first started work, I was expected to wear a skirted suit with pantyhose, even on the days that I was installing print cables under people’s desks.
Then when business casual first came out, it was expected that you’d wear a blazer. Pants were fine for women (hurrah!), but by god, you’d better have a blazer!
At the time, you also didn’t wear a sleeveless shirt or sandals to work.
At the time, women who wanted to be considered “professional” were still counseled to not wear bright nail polish or lipstick. Or long hair. Or big earrings.
Men at the time were told that “business casual” was khakis, a long-sleeved button-down shirt, and a blazer. With loafers.
If it was summer, and you didn’t have meetings, you could ditch the blazer. And maybe wear a polo shirt.
That was up to the mid-to-late-1990s. I was working at a major insurance company in Florida.
But since then – and I associate it with Y2K testing, since I was working on that at the time, the definition of “business casual” has evolved based on your job and industry. Like any phrase, the definition has changed, expanded, and evolved.
So maybe for the industry and location where you work, the shirt would not be acceptable.
But I’ve seen some of the programmers at my office wear a shirt very like that one. It falls within my company’s corporate “business casual” guidelines. Ditto the hardware IT guys – they’re crawling around on the floor sometimes; I wouldn’t want to wear a button-down shirt and khakis for that.
At my current job, some of us “dress” a little more than others – the entry-level coders aren’t big on dressing – jeans/khakis and a non-t-shirt top, and non-athletic shoes. The mid-level sorts dress a little less casually. Some of the older VPs wear suits, some don’t. One of the VPs who’s a doctor wears nice trousers, a long-sleeved button-down shirt, and tie. Like the doctors we saw as kids, LOL. One of of docs in my department wears jeans and a long-sleeved button-down shirt, with loafers. My current VP wears jeans/khakis and a button-down.
I wear slacks, a nice top, and dressy sandals/heels/short boots. Or a dress (with sleeves) and heels/dressy sandals/boots. Maybe a sweater. Depends on how cold it is.I rarely wear anything remotely like a traditional blazer – if I must wear a structured top, I prefer a shorter jacket with 3 buttons. Sometimes I wear jeans, yeah – but they are “dressed up”, not worn with a t-shirt and sneakers.
(And that is why women’s business casual is such a PITA. So many ways to go wrong. I’ve had to explain that to younger female employees before.)
Nearly nothing in my current closet would have been “business casual” 15 years ago. But it is now.
Yes if he tucked it in and wore a pair of khakis. The way he is doing it no. Even tucked in with dresser jeans and decent shoes might fly but not those.
GrumpyBunny, I won’t even try to comment on the evolution of women’s dress standards! For men, though, I think (I may be wrong) that business casual is what I described for men. What you describe as an evolving standard for men, I would categorize as “a firm that no longer requires business casual.” It’s not a re-definition of the standard so much as an abandonment. Of course, if enough businesses do so, I guess it amounts to the same thing–a new standard. I know that virtually everyone I see at a cross-firm conference where the standard is “business casual” dresses as I’ve described. Whatever the accepted standard is “at home,” everyone seems to understand how to dress “for company.”
A firm that has a standard other than business casual is, of course, a-okay, and that doesn’t preclude a professional environment. It’s just not business casual–and this must be true, because I am such a fashion expert.
Maybe I’m less snobby. I’m in good company, though – every single presenter (including Tim Cook) at Apple’s big event today was wearing basically that shirt…untucked. Nobody walked out because the presenters weren’t dressed appropriately.
Seriously, I think some of you folks are posting from the 1950’s.
No one in this thread even hinted that they’d walk out of a meeting or a company if someone wasn’t dressed properly. However many companies do have dress codes, and unless you’re the CEO, it pays to try to follow them.
Right. If a company’s dress code says “business dress,” and someone asks if a turtleneck and sport coat is business dress, the answer is no. If they ask if it’s business casual, the answer is yes, that’s fine. Nobody is saying that you shouldn’t wear a turtleneck and sport coat is unacceptable attire in any workplace.
Apple is a hip west coast tech company. The dress code at west coast tech companies is basically a shirt and something covering your butt. T shirts and shorts are worn by a lot of the engineering staff and going way up to engineering VPs. Though you will find that khakis and tucked in shirts get more common as you go up the corporate ladder. Getting rid of what is seen as bullshit dress codes like business casual is part of the corporate culture in a lot of tech companies.
It’s not getting rid of a bullshit dress code, it’s substituting a new one. Try wearing a speedo, or a three piece suit, and you’ll see that shifting the boundaries is not the same as removing them.
Walk out, no. Take seriously, maybe not. Strange that previous poster picked the Apple presentation today because it had quite a few technical problems with the live stream and basically presented at lot of me too technology. A bit more polish would not have hurt.
