Turns out Business Casual Is a Pain in the Ass

I have worked in start-ups since graduating college, and have never been in a position to have to wear a suit every day. The biggest myth though is that somehow not having to wear a suit has made lives easier.

In order to build Arthur, I’ve spent the past year trying to better understand the relationship between what we buy and what we wear. In speaking to a number of our clients, two things became clear quite quickly: “weekend wear” should really only make up about 20% of your clothing, and business casual has made getting dressed 5 days a week (or more) exponentially more nuanced and complicated.

The Coastal Power Shift

We all thought the move toward business casual would have been a relief. The shift began almost as a form of rebellion in Silicon Valley, when sweatshirt-clad developers were making as much money as their investment banking, suit-clad counterparts in NY. The message was, “the clothes don’t make the man, why not be comfortable at work.”

As burgeoning tech companies set the trend and made a casual dress-code just one of many workplace perks, all of a sudden “work-life balance” entered into the zeitgeist and a suit no longer carried as much clout as it once did. With equal salaries to boot, top recruits were now choosing roles on the West Coast over roles on Wall Street or in consulting.

And so it began — the move toward business casual occurred across industries, albeit with a few laggards. Even still, there’s no denying that business casual has far surpassed the world of media, advertising, and tech. Law firms, accounting firms, and Fortune 500 companies are all making the switch, institutionally or more informally. In fact according to the Boston Business Journal, 73% of law firms now have a business casual dress code.

There’s just one problem — no one knows what the hell “business casual” means!

Who’s Defining What

Let’s discuss the range. Some people loosely define business casual more by what it’s not than by what it is — not a suit, but not jeans. In other words, for men that would mean khakis and a button-down and for women, trousers or a knee-length skirt and blouse — both with the added layer of a solid-color sweater or blazer.

If the line were that clear, I wouldn’t be writing this. To me, the above is what I would define more as “business professional,” that line right below a suit where the clothes are still relatively formal.

But start-ups will also claim to have a “business casual” atmosphere, where jeans (of all shades!) are more than welcome, and tee-shirts blend in just fine. So how should one know what to wear? I’ve seen numerous posts on Quora, most often about the first day of work, where people have no clue how to interpret HR’s description of the work environment as unhelpfully “business casual.”

The X, Y, & Z Factor

The element that the digital world introduced (or magnified) was the impact of your role in a company on how you dress. Your CTO may come into work in shorts and the tee-shirt from your company’s latest swag bag, and no one will bat an eye. But your head of biz dev will dress for whatever will put others at ease, and that means each day (or hour) may require a different look. In fact, As one Business Insider article notes, your outfit choice may hinge on any of the following: industry, size of the company, number of employees, amount of interaction between employees and customers, geography, climate, culture, and average age of the workforce.

Based on consultations between our stylists and clients, I know that all these factors come into play in a way that leaves everyone with unique expectations for what they should wear to work, even compared to their colleagues.

In Theory vs In Practice

There seem to be two factors that go into the outfit one finally settles on for the day: how much am I able to express my personal style, while still falling within the dress code of where I’m going. Which element you favor is a personal choice, where some insist on expressing their identity through clothing while others are ready to give in to whatever will blend in 100%.

So in theory, business casual is great — no more restrictive clothing! I get to wear color! I can be comfortable at work! Yes, all these things are true — but just like the transition from grade school to high school for some of us, not being told what to wear every day comes with its pluses and minuses.

Who Is It (Really) a Pain For?

There is no dearth of articles that speak to this problem regarding the vagueness of the “business casual” blanket term. But let’s get right to it — at the end of the day, this problem puts a larger strain on women than it does on men.

There are two components of appropriate when talking about how to dress for the workplace: how formal are your clothes and how revealing is your outfit. In fact, according to one survey, 79% of managers feel employees are coming to work dressed either too casually or bearing too much skin. While yes, it is possible for men to dress in a revealing manner, this is certainly more of a consideration for women.

It doesn’t matter if you’re dressed in business formal or business casual, neither preclude a woman from missing the mark when it comes to being too revealing, just look at Samantha Jones on Sex and The City and Elaine Vassal on Ally mcBeal (or even Alana on Broad City). But the “mark” itself may be subjective. Men and women alike have very different ideas of what “too much skin” means, and while anyone would urge you to err on the side of caution, even this part of dressing is still a bit grey. And let’s not forget that this is all to avoid standing out — we haven’t even gotten to how one can actually be good at dressing for work.

The AM Struggle

As one Entrepreneur post recommends, “Take your clothing cues from a coworker or a friend in a similar field who looks effortlessly put together.”

I’ve spent the last year asking women about their shopping and dressing habits. I’ve tried to learn everything about how they shop (specifically online), how satisfied they are with their clothes, and what their greatest struggles are when deciding what to wear.

I can tell you that “effortlessly” has never been an answer to any of my questions.

For most women, dressing for work is the first task of the day, and a challenging one at that. The most common gripe I hear is that they are trying to bring in their own sense of style into what suits their work environment. But then there are functional restraints as well, such as a long commute or a cold office.

At the end of the day, the largest issue is that women feel they can’t get away with wearing the same thing as much as men can. They feel there needs to be variety in their outfit choices, whether to please themselves or to not be judged. This concern leads to both a heavier financial burden, and more insecurity about how one is dressed walking into work in the morning.

Full Circle

With all our excitement and initial cheer over the notion of everyone moving to business casual, we seem to have found ourselves back at square one with the “uniform” movement. Who can forget the image of Mark Zuckerberg’s closet of the same exact tee-shirts in sweatshirts? And Steve Jobs’s Issey Miyake black turtlenecks?

Initially most regarded this shift as rejecting the best part of being able to dress business casual — all that creative freedom down the drain! But in the end, there’s an argument to be made that a work uniform helps to limit one’s choices in the morning and allow you to direct your creative energy to things that should matter more for work — better use of “brain share,” as its called.

As one woman wrote, given all the additional expectations put on women, the reliability of a closet where all pieces match each other certainly helps to rid us of many of our insecurities.

Can We Have It All (In Our Wardrobe)?

But is there still an embedded sacrifice in the switch to a uniform? Some may say so, because really what we’ve decided to do is ensure that the outfits we form will never be a miss in the workplace.

With Arthur, that was something we want to help women achieve without feeling like they need to find their own casual version of a suit. Why not offload the creativity it requires to feel excited about your outfit to someone whose job it was to know this stuff? One of the most common problems women face in the closet in a concern about how to put full outfits together, especially because typically we make the mistake of buying one-off items.

Getting dressed for work should be fun and it should allow us to carry our identity into the workplace in a stylish and appropriate manner. Our goal as a company is to ensure that women embrace what business casual has to offer, without feeling like they want to rip out their hair.

Leigh Sevin is the Co-Founder of Arthur, a membership for women that helps them assemble the right wardrobe for their professional lives. Members enjoy perks like 10% back in credit on all purchases, plus free shipping & returns on all orders.