Can I wear this to the office?

August 18, 2025

I get this question from readers quite a bit, and I think it reveals something about how they can focus on their inner world more than the external one.

Because the obvious reaction is: how would I know? I don’t work in your office, I don’t know what other people wear. It might still be suits and ties; it might be T-shirts and shorts. Even within the increasingly common middle ground of ‘smart casual’ there’s a lot of variation and usually a developed uniform for each office.

There may have been an international ‘standard’ for business attire historically, but there isn’t really any more.

For example, a friend of mine who works at KPMG talks about how the standard uniform in his department is a polo shirt and chinos. Some wear a shirt, certainly, but tailored trousers are very rare and a tailored jacket always means a meeting.

Whereas another friend works in private wealth management. He related recently how he attended a senior-partner meeting and of the 20 people round the table, 18 of them were wearing shirts and half-zip cashmere sweaters (below). That’s often not a great combination, but that’s a topic for another day – the important point is that even without suits, and no official dress code, a uniform had clearly been established.

And of course we’re all familiar with the modern finance uniform of a white shirt and gilet/vest – to the extent that you see some adherents being teased for wearing them even when it’s 40 degrees, and they’re sweating buckets.

People don’t wear a suit and tie anymore, but each office or profession still tends to develop a uniform. Men love uniformity – they don’t like sticking out, they don’t like having to think – but more importantly uniforms develop in offices because the role of clothes is different to everyday life: clothes indicate a level of professionalism, of common purpose. Even if it is a T-shirt and shorts.

So the first question to ask yourself, if you’re one of those readers that has asked whether they can wear something to work, is how much the proposed clothing deviates from the norm – from this implicit dress code.

Look around you: does anyone else wear the thing you’re deliberating about? Let’s say it’s a pair of cream tailored trousers, which you’ll wear with a pretty conservative shirt and loafers. Does anyone in your office wear anything like that?

Discount the oddballs, of course – in my previous life there was a salesman who wore a bowler hat to work. He worked in telesales though and never saw any clients, so no one really cared. And he stopped after a few months.

Outside of those people, does anyone wear cream trousers? I’m going to assume the answer is no, because otherwise you probably wouldn’t be asking. So then consider how much would those trousers would stand out. Be honest: would they be close to the sharp, pale chinos others wear, or dramatically different in a world of charcoal and navy suiting?

If it’s the latter, don’t wear them. Save them for a nice summer event and focus on wearing a better cut version of those worsteds to the office.

I mention cream trousers by the way, as they’re an item I wore to my old office more than once. No one else wore anything like it, and they always stood out too much.

Actually more importantly, they didn’t achieve what I wanted, which was to dress with the old-world elegance I’d seen in Dressing the Man and other sartorial primers. Because elegance is quiet, subtle. It’s not about things that make people stare at you from across the floor.

Then there’s that mantra of ‘dress for the job you want, not the job you have’. As ever there is some truth in this saying, and also a lot of rubbish.

If you work in the postroom, don’t wear the CEO’s three-piece suits: it won’t help you get that job in any way.

But, there’s usually no harm in dressing a little better than you have to. Not in double-breasted chalkstripes (one bank I know had an implicit rule that only partners wore DBs) but maybe having your suit altered so it fits better, or keeping your shoes polished nicely. You will just look good, like you have your shit together.

There are some offices where everyone wears anything, a complete mixed bag of styles, expressions and personalities. But sometimes that is the uniform – to have a style, to be creative. And readers in those environments tend not to ask this question, because it is so open.

Most offices are consistent social situations, with clear leaders. You are usually the best person to judge whether something would be appropriate, and I suspect what readers are often asking for is encouragement to wear something more unusual. But while other fora might provide that enabling, I tend to the opposite: I’ve felt the burn of getting it wrong too often, and had to give gentle advice to employees when I became more senior.

The menswear references we love are useful in many regards – the importance of fit, principles of elegance, great colour combinations – but it’s important to see them in context. Those people from the 1930s or 1950s were if anything more conservative than us, rarely deviating in obvious ways from their peers; the dressers who were admired did so in terms of quality and taste. That’s the key lesson I’d take from them in terms of propriety.

But let’s end with some reader participation: what’s the implicit uniform in your office, and if you’re happy to share, what’s the most inappropriate thing you’ve ever worn?