Advertising Supplement Don’t commit the usual workplace fashion faux pas

The casual workplace is now the norm. Shirt-and-tie-clad males and business-suit-attired females still hold court in some offices around the country, but they’ve become the exception. “Most offices have a fairly relaxed dress code, especially in the summer, but that doesn’t mean employees should be taking advantage of the loosened rules,” says Aimee Stillman, a former HR specialist for the University of Florida and Southern Wine and Spirits. “There’s still a level of decorum and professionalism you have to maintain when working with others. You can’t wear short shorts and flip-flops. You can’t throw good taste out the window.”

Stillman says that today’s younger workers often begin their careers sitting with their laptops in Starbucks or shared workspaces — places where what you wear hardly matters. “When most people come out of school, they get used to the fact that they can wear shorts and flip-flops to work every day,” she says. “When they get to an office setting, they aren’t always ready to adhere to a dress code. They want to wear whatever they want.”

Stillman says that even in the most casual workplaces, dressing down to the bottom level is a mistake. “Any employee who wears a hoodie and shorts every day is essentially doing a disservice to his or her career,” she says. “I’m not talking about the casual worker. I’m talking about the person who looks like they might as well be going out to breakfast after a long night of drinking. You know who you are.”

You are what you wear

Thomas Brickton, a Boston-based sociologist who studies workplace environments, says clothes are an identifier — “a way to announce yourself to others” — and that all of your hard work can be diminished if the wrong person sees you in the wrong outfit. “You may write the most marvelous code in the world, but if the CEO sees you in the kitchen grabbing a cup of coffee and you look like you just woke up on the subway, he or she is going to think a little less of you,” Brickton says. “You can wear jeans — shorts, even — and still look like you’re a professional. But if you give some employees that inch, they’ll take the whole mile.”

Especially in the summer, says Michelle Rice, a financial analyst for the state of Missouri. “We have to pull our interns aside sometimes and tell them that they’re not here for their cleavage,” Rice says. “I try to be as professional as I can be when I talk to them about what they wear, but sometimes you just have to be direct.”

Stillman says she and her co-workers in the HR department used to marvel at some of the outfits their new employees considered appropriate workplace attire. “The women may have been dressing a little too provocatively when it was warm, but the guys were the worst,” she says. “They’d dress like they were going to the gym. One time, this guy showed up in a sleeveless shirt. At what company is a sleeveless shirt ever appropriate? I don’t even want to see my husband wearing them in the house.”

Generation gap

Stillman and Rice say they understand the disconnect some younger employees have with dress codes. “Those of us in our 40s and 50s, maybe even some of us in our 30s, can remember that exact day the dress code changed at the office,” Stillman says. “We went from skirts, pants suits, jackets and ties to khaki pants, jeans, short-sleeve shirts and, in some cases, shorts.”

Rice says the adjustment of the dresscode bar impacts everyone. “Look at young men beginning a career. They don’t see the suit as the former standard,” she says. “To them, the former standard is khaki pants and an untucked collared shirt, so when you tell them the dress code is casual, they’re only going to adjust downward.”

Brickton says that new employees can follow a fairly simple and visual guideline: Dress like your boss. “Unless he or she is coming to work in a suit everyday, which probably isn’t the case, just mimic their dress code,” Brickton says. “You can make modifications, sure, but if your boss isn’t wearing flip-flops, that’s probably a pretty good indication that you shouldn’t be wearing flip-flops. Well, you shouldn’t be wearing flip-flops to work under any circumstances.”

Rice agrees. “I can’t think of anything worse than flip-flops in the office. They’re loud, they’re just begging to be removed, and anyone wearing them looks like they should be cleaning out the locker room showers,” she says.