Letting Loose on Friday : Fashion: A workday without ties or pumps? It’s true. Businesses are easing their dress codes in an attempt to boost morale. Even banks and law firms are joining in.
It is Friday, which means office manager Kim Dixon will take only 15 minutes to dress for success. Instead of crafting a French twist, she will toss on a baseball cap. Instead of sifting through silk separates and suede shoes, she will whip on jeans, an oversize T-shirt and cowboy boots.
For Dixon and millions of others nationwide, this is casual Friday. Inspired by the think-tank attire of the Silicon Valley, where dressing down has long been the norm, it’s a day in which firms try to boost morale by releasing employees from suits and ties, pantyhose and pumps. A familiar sight in advertising agencies and other creative havens, casual clothes are now invading the conservative corridors of banks and law firms, if only once a month. Benefits range from a relaxed mental state to a nice savings on clothing and dry-cleaning bills, employees say.
The comfort level varies from office to office--as does the frequency of casual days. In some companies, jeans are fine; in others, they are taboo. Most declare beachwear off limits and promote classy weekend attire like khaki pants, Bermuda shorts, polo shirts. The idea is to be casual, not careless.
“You still have to have a professional appearance in case you run into the president in the hall,” explains James Boyd, assistant manager of graphics for Hilton Hotels Corp. in Beverly Hills. On the company’s monthly casual day, Boyd says, “the president sets the tone,” typically wearing a “nice” sweater or polo shirt, slacks and loafers.
Boyd’s enthusiasm starts to build on Thursday night when, he says, “it’s a relief to know you can roll out of bed in the morning and roll into your Cole Haans.” With the loafers, he usually wears a chambray shirt and loose-fitting jeans. And his Friday comfort doesn’t stop there. Minus a conservative suit, tie and shirt, Boyd says: “I don’t have the dry-cleaning bill adding up in the back of my mind.”
Dixon, office manager of Clein + White, a small public relations firm in West Hollywood, says weekly dress-down days save her more than $600 a year--in dry-cleaning bills and “by not buying that extra outfit, that extra pair of slacks.”
But the day isn’t a given. If a client is expected in the office, Dixon says, “we choose as a group to dress a bit better, even though we could come in casually.”
In some firms, there isn’t a choice. A client’s scheduled visit triggers the alert for business attire, delivered by memo, phone or what one employee jokingly calls “a visit from the fashion police.”
At Langberg, Leslie, Mann & Gabriel, a Century City law firm, there is a different approach. To greet new clients, senior partner Barry Langberg says he wears a business suit. But his colleagues aren’t expected to go along, and Langberg tells his visitors “up front that casual day is a tradition in the office.”
When a couple of lawyers quietly started dressing down a few years ago, Langberg was less than thrilled. “I thought we should dress more formally,” he says. “I thought if clients came in, it wouldn’t be the right appearance.”
Now, he wears jeans and so do longtime clients “who have taken up the tradition.” But Langberg still takes a ribbing over a memo in which he attempted to define the boundaries of casual. He specified “no beachwear” without giving any examples. “I keep telling them, I’ll know it when I see it.”
Some dress-down edicts just won’t die. Earlier this year, publisher HarperCollins formally introduced a casual day for its New York staff--only to find excerpts from its memo and an employee’s letter in a Publishers Weekly article headlined, “Are Kilts Okay?”
The employee complained that the list of “unacceptable items such as sweat suits, torn jeans and tank tops . . . left hundreds of New York staffers openly pondering whether nose rings, tattoos and men with earrings are still OK since they--along with swimsuits, halter tops and micro-miniskirts--were not included on the company’s inappropriate attire list.”
At another New York publishing house, Oxford University Press, slippers would be on the “no” list. Andrew Albanese, an assistant editor, says a memo was issued after “one individual wore a halter top and another wore slippers and looked as if he just rolled out of bed.”
Employees are allowed to “loosen up on Friday, but no one is swinging from the chandeliers,” Albanese says, adding: “You still have to be somewhat concerned about your appearance, because it is so ingrained within you and because you don’t want to come into work looking like a slob. (The impression) might carry over to other days.”
John T. Molloy, author of “Dress for Success” and a leading advocate of the business “uniform,” is busy changing the rules to accommodate casual Friday. “A lot of my corporate clients have chosen to go in that direction,” he says. “The interesting thing is, when you put it into effect, all these wonderful reports come flying through. Six months later, there are complaints.”
The owner of a small company whose casual day backfired brought Molloy in. “He wanted some guidelines. He wore a sport jacket, but the young guys came in jeans and sneakers. And one woman was wearing leggings like a ballet dancer. This blew him out of the water,” Molloy says. The final list ruled out jeans, leggings, very short skirts and revealing blouses.
Dressing down “is a very tricky deal for women,” Molloy says. “They had a uniform--a jacket of some sort over a dress or a skirt. It’s conservative, not too flashy. Once you say casual the rules are gone. There are more chances of making a mistake.”
Anne Pringle, pension coordinator for Hilton Hotels, agrees. “Everyone loves the day,” she says. “But I think all the women are commenting on the problem of what to wear, just because women have a wide variety of options. I think women have a more difficult time deciding what is casual and what is professional at the same time.”
Susan Meisinger, vice president of the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va., identifies with the quandary. After the group, which represents 54,000 personnel professionals, polled members and found 67% had a casual Friday, it established its own.
“Initially, I had to go home and assess the closet to find something that met the criteria,” Meisinger says. “Something that was formal enough for an executive in the organization. But informal enough not to be considered my normal business wear. And not as informal as something I would wear on the weekend.
“I got to go shopping. It wasn’t that terrible,” she quips. “As a practical matter, I use the clothes for informal social functions.” Although she could wear jeans, Meisinger prefers slacks, Oxford-cloth shirts and silk print blouses. More than 20 years in the workplace has influenced her idea of dressing down.
It is a similar situation for Lee Dawson, a vice president with Wells Fargo Bank in Los Angeles. “To show you how much things have changed,” he says, “over 24 years ago, when I was a trainee, I came to work in a blue dress shirt and the manager sent me home to change to a white one.” Now his department observes casual Friday and he wears something “conservative,” such as a sport shirt, khaki slacks and loafers or Rockport shoes.
Initially, surrounded by suits on his Metrolink commute, he says he was a little uncomfortable. “I felt I wasn’t properly dressed. When we first started doing this, I found myself telling people: ‘Oh, it’s casual day. That’s why I’m dressed like this.’ I don’t do that anymore.”
At the Sullivan Cos., insurance brokers with offices in Pasadena and Los Angeles, casual Friday is decided department by department, depending on how much interaction employees have with clients. The day was offered, as in many companies, “as a kind of morale boost in economic down times,” says John Bigelow, vice president of administration.
He can’t participate, but his ride-share partner, Kami Carpenter, can. “When I get in the car, my joy is it’s Friday,” says Bigelow. “Hers is that she can dress casually.”
Carpenter, an underwriting assistant, feels “a lot more productive” in jeans and tennis shoes. “It’s easier to do things. And the general mood is a lot better too, a lot more relaxed. I’m a happier person on Friday. It’s just a lot of different things. If you file, you don’t have to worry about snagging your nylons. If you want to go for a walk, you don’t have to change your shoes.”
As yet, casual-Friday clothing isn’t featured in stores. But DNR, a menswear trade publication, recently ran a four-part series titled “FridayWear,” with photographs of men on New York streets in dapper sportswear. Or as the publication put it: “New York Dudes in Their Friday Duds.”
A lot of the duds looked like Levi’s. Maker Levi Strauss & Co. promotes a national “Casual Day for United Cerebral Palsy,” one of many fund-raisers in which employees are charged for the privilege of dressing down. And within the company, business casual is defined as “clothes that allow you to feel professional but allow you to feel unrestricted,” says marketing specialist Brad Williams.
But attorney Barry Langberg sees more to the day than comfortable clothing. “Anything people share is good for morale,” he says. “If we had a formal day where people had to dress up in tuxedos, that would probably have the same effect--although it would be more of a pain in the neck.”
No Day at the Beach
It may be good for water-cooler camaraderie, but dressing down can be tricky. How casual is casual, anyway? How do you hang loose without cooking your goose? Judging from the following corporate guidelines, forget about anything you wear to the beach or gym.
Hilton Hotels Corp., Beverly Hills--No “athletic attire,” such as sweat tops and pants, leotards, gym shorts, beach thongs or T-shirts.
General Motors Corp., Detroit--Only two items--blue jeans and shorts--are on the “no” list. A company spokesperson says, “We feel employees will use their best judgment.”
Wells Fargo Bank executive offices, Los Angeles--The unwritten general rule: “No beachwear,” which includes tank tops, shorts, sandals, caps, midriff tops and sweats.
Society for Human Resource Management, Alexandria, Va.--No torn, ragged, dirty jeans or sneakers. Original ban on shorts lifted to permit Bermuda shorts and “shorts that are part of a professional suit.”
J.D. Power and Associates, Agoura--”Business casual, not beach casual” is expected. No shorts, cropped tops, see-through blouses or T-shirts with “inappropriate messages.”
The Sullivan Cos., Pasadena and Los Angeles--No shorts, tank tops, sweat pants, T-shirts, spandex, sandals or see-through clothing. Men must wear a shirt with “some sort of a collar.” Jeans are OK “as long as they don’t have holes in them and aren’t cut off.”
