How NOT to dress for the office now that June is here...
Thursday June 01 2006
For 10 months of the year, your office is a buttoned-up and straight-laced triumph of professional style. Colleagues pride themselves on being more groomed than the front-row at Milan Fashion Week.
Co-workers devour the latest edition of Vogue as soon as it hits the shelves and your lunchtime conversations hinge around the sartorial faux-pas of the rich and tasteless.
That is, at least, until summer, when even the most innocuous dose of sunshine scorches your style antenna and the silly season arrives to your wardrobe.
Gone is the Miss Marple chic - all bashful blouses and high-waisted skirts. Come June you disregard the accepted style etiquette, throwing yourself into the heady spirit of the season with the kind of unself-conscious style abandon of Charlie Dimmock.
Strappy tops, ra-ra skirts, 'novelty' shoes and enough beads to adorn a love parade become adopted as the unofficial summer dress code.
Embracing your inner Woodstock might be all very well if your boss happens to be a New Age therapist with a '70s obsession, but many managers despair of female employees who arrive at the office looking like a backing dancer for the Pussycat Dolls. (Not least because their male colleagues will be rendered significantly less productive.)
A slightly dated, if not chauvinistic ethos perhaps but, in management circles at least, the more skin on show, the less serious the staffer. But with this season's fashions encompassing everything from micro shorts to babydoll dresses and skyscraper wedges, how do you reconcile summer's styles with office politics without committing a major dress code infraction?
"Keep it simple - no ruffles, no frills, nothing busy," advises Shelly Corkery, head of fashion direction at Brown Thomas. "A simple white shirt always looks great. Roll up the sleeves to make it a little less formal.
"People underestimate the importance of fabric. They might say they're wearing a shirt - but it's silk or chiffon - so it's just not appropriate for daywear. They're meant to be worn after 6pm so keep them for then.
"Wedges are still a little bit too trendy for the office. Platforms would be better because they have the heel."
Corkery's advice might come as cold comfort to those who were envisaging a hot office summer of belly-baring strappy tops and mini-skirts, but there is a note of concession.
"Keep vests for the beach," continues Corkery. "Office wear should be more proper. A scoop-neck top would be better - keeping covered is more in line with this season's style."
Certainly Sir Alan Sugar would agree. During the recent series of The Apprentice the entrepreneur made clear his thoughts on ladies who fail to dress appropriately for the office.
"If I did business by flashing my size 34Ds then i would not be happy with myself," Sir Alan boomed (although presumably if the businessman awoke thus he would have more to consider than his professional discontentment). "No one working for me is going to do it and that is the bottom line."
Had Sugar's comments been made in a bona fide office situation, he would have found himself before an employment tribunal but given the protective shield of reality TV, Sugar was saved any reprimand.
In his defence, however, he was perhaps only articulating the same thoughts that would occur to anyone in his position.
"We make value judgments on people according to how they appear," says Rowan Manahan, managing director of the career management firm, Fortify Services.
"Part of that value judgment is composed of how an individual comports themselves and if it seems you don't invest in your image then it reflects badly.
'People assume that you don't take the job seriously but these are the kinds of conversations that take place in the executive rooms, rather than in public."
Style expert Celia Holman Lee disagrees with Manahan over the finger-wagging sessions that take place in these hypothetical boardrooms. "You don't go into an office and see girls wearing a mini with a low neck," she says, "but I don't think bosses would pass remark if you did. Those days are gone.
"A good rule of thumb is to be neat, tidy and presentable, but I wouldn't be losing the head over a mini. People have moved on a bit. It's only sad people who get upset over those things.
"As long as you're smart, tidy, clean and groomed, I think you can wear what's fashionable but in an office setting it's actually very uncomfortable to wear a skirt - especially when you sit down because it rides up. But if you feel comfortable and don't mind the stares - then go ahead."
Previously, however, it wasn't dress codes but social codes that determined how far would-be fashionistas could push the boundaries. Now, says Holman Lee, there's a new sense of liberation to fashion.
"When we used to wear minis in the '60s you would have to have the legs and you'd have to have the shape. It was the Twiggy generation so we were wearing them with pretty pumps and coloured tights. It was a much more dressy time.
"Now they wear minis and they don't give a damn what anyone else thinks. They don't care if they've got a bit of weight on. It's the same if they want to wear a belly top - they'll wear a belly-top."
In spite of the assertions that the days of passing remarks on a colleague's dress sense are over, Manahan isn't convinced that eyebrow-raising style doesn't lower the stakes for the employee in question.
"Businessmen become more gradually conservative. Even if they think of themselves of trendy, there is a creeping conservatism as they become older and more successful. So while even these things might not be said, they are still having an impact on your career."
How NOT to dress for the office now that June is here...
DO
* Invest in a good wrap dress - lightweight enough to keep you cool but covered enough to look demure. Just make sure it's tied properly.
* Consider a shirt and high-waisted skirt combo.
* Stay away from high fashion fads, like wedges. Not only are they impractical for walking but they make the short journey to the office kitchen unenviably precarious.
DON'T
* Do a Charlie Dimmock. Wear underwear correctly.
* Be tempted to strip down to a skimpy vest and mini. Even if your boss is "down wit da yoof" you'll still find yourself the subject of the week's watercooler moments. As well as some other moments...
* Wear flip-flops. Few things are as offensive as wearing these to work. A foam pad and string does not a shoe make.
