Casual Fridays: Dos And Don'ts In Business Attire

A lot of offices have adopted casual Fridays as well as casual days in the office.

What you wear to the office during these casual days stays with you for the whole week. Meaning, if you didnt dress appropriately on those occasional dress down days, you will probably give out the wrong impression for the rest of the work week.

Probably the most basic and accepted attire for casual office days are polo shirt or golf shirts, paired with casual dress slacks or neatly pressed khakis and well polished loafers.

While this sounds real simple, most people still get it wrong. The polo shirt here should be clean, pressed, not faded nor frayed, and tucked into your pants of generally higher quality. It doesnt sound like something you would wear to the beach right? Yet, a lot of people show up with just that.

What we suggest is ensuring that you have two kinds of polo shirts in your closet. Mercerized cotton polo shirts or golf shirts are best recommended for the office. They are spun finely that they look and feel like silk.

Polo shirts or golf shirts may be alternated with a simple blue faintly striped dress shirt worn with an open collar and a white crew neck undershirt. Dress down Fridays is also the best days to put on a conversational tie. These are those that you generally wont wear on a typical work day. Some suggested conversational ties are those from Tommy Bahama and Jerry Garcia as well as ties that look a little different. If you are not comfortable wearing something less than the conservative tie, you may try putting on some pink ties on Fridays just to be on the edgier side.

For slacks, though khakis are well accepted, you may really give out a good impression by wearing twills or worsted dress slacks.

Aside from twill and worsted wool, you may also try gabardine trousers which are usually slightly heavier in weight so it has a nice draping effect especially if you are wearing one with pleated style.

And lastly, sports jackets and coats are very convenient to have. A nave blue, two button sport jacket may even end up in your favourites.

So generally, you should opt out beachwear at home when we talk about casual Fridays or casual days in the office. Best to have some nicely made slacks and polo shirts to have a really casual yet elegant look.