Last week, model/mother/influencer Chrissy Teigen quickly garnered over 250,000 Instagram likes for her pajama-wearing, pregnant belly-baring selfie, captioned “dress for the job you want.” Beyond Teigen’s playful wish to have a job “sleeping,” and even beyond the subtext of her desire to expand her job as a mother in the wake of a very public miscarriage, Teigen’s post hints at a deeper truth. The adage, “dress for the job you want,” acknowledges that the clothing we wear is more than a reflection of our current taste; the clothing we choose is a vision board for who we want to be.
Of course, it is not quite that simple.
Dressing for the job you want might sometimes be inappropriate. Moreover, this pithy wisdom suggests that people dress the same way every day. We know that is not true – an architect does not wear the same clothing to pitch to a client as they do on a construction site. Today, American society has institutionalized the idea of a variable dress code through the invention of Casual Friday.
Casual Friday began in the United States during the mid-1990s. The original idea, from Hewlett-Packard founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard, was that wearing less restrictive clothing would prompt more creative work. Unfortunately, this created a lot of confusion. That void was quickly filled when Rick Miller of Dockers sent a “Casual Businesswear Guide,” filled with “acceptable business casual wear” to 25,000 human resource managers, ushering in the era of chinos as official Friday wear (Husbands).
However, Casual Friday has roots even deeper than the 1990s Dockers revolution. Casual Friday’s roots are found on the island of Hawaii, far from corporate boardrooms and Wall Street. In the 1960s, Mort Feldman, the founder of a Hawaiian clothing company, Kahala, grew frustrated with the incongruity of business people wearing suits and ties to work in Hawaii’s tropical climate. In 1962, he and other Hawaiian shirt manufacturers launched a campaign called “Operation Liberation” to promote men wearing Aloha attire, aka Hawaiian shirts, during the summer. After lobbying the legislature, Hawaii passed a 1967 resolution creating “Aloha Fridays,” which made it mandatory for state legislators to wear Aloha shirts on Fridays (Trufelman).
Clearly, it has got to be more comfortable to wear a Hawaiian shirt than a three-piece suit in 90-degree weather. Likewise, chinos are probably more comfortable than a jacket and tie. But is there a deeper reason or motivation for Casual Friday than just comfort? If so, what is that reason? Is Casual Friday an opportunity for people to express their individual tastes, or is it just a ruse that forces people into expressing societal tastes or norms?
To better explore whether Casual Friday is truly an expression of taste, we must examine why and how employers and workers embrace Casual Friday.
Although Casual Friday is not particularly common in medicine, one local pediatrician, Dr. Y, has latched onto this concept. From April to October, he wears a vibrantly patterned Hawaiian shirt to work every Friday, much to the disgust of many of his partners. Dr. Y is a lifelong New Englander of Irish-Catholic ancestry who happens to own a timeshare on the Big Island. Cultural appropriation, anyone? His favorite shirt is a deep aqua color, printed with large neon pink flamingos. When he wears it, Dr. V, who completed 18 years of parochial education and thinks that wearing polka-dotted socks represents “wild” dressing, has to hide a visible shudder.
One wonders whether Dr. Y is actually wearing the shirt just for that reason. This summer, when someone complimented his pink flamingo shirt, he was overheard proudly announcing, “I wear this shirt because Dr. M hates it.” Dr. M, the female managing partner, does hate this shirt. Perhaps she hates it because it is truly ugly. But perhaps she hates it because, as a woman in a traditionally male field, she would never feel comfortable wearing such an audacious expression of her taste.
Dr. Y obviously relishes the chance to express his personal taste. Is everyone as free as Dr. Y to express their personal taste? The myriad of magazine articles, particularly from the early 90s, explaining in great detail what professional women should wear on Casual Fridays suggest that Casual Fridays might be anything but freeing for some segments of society. Even 20 years after Casual Friday was introduced, Lea Goldman, writing in Marie Claire, bemoaned a work colleague who wore jeans on Casual Friday week after week until she eventually was “marginalized…passed over for all sorts of plum projects and…moved on.” Goldman quotes a female investment bank vice president, who was “horrified” by a young associate wearing open-toed shoes.
After spending several paragraphs explaining the challenges that women face on Casual Friday, Goldman goes on to explain her own solution: to completely avoid Casual Friday by dressing in her usual business attire, a practice which she credits as contributing to her professional success. And then, even after acknowledging that the point of Casual Friday is self-expression, Goldman ends her article with seven bold-face rules for what women ought to wear on Casual Friday.
Even if Casual Friday represents a challenge for women, they still seem enthusiastic. A survey by LinkedIn and Marie Claire reported that 66 percent of women liked Casual Fridays, and 24 percent “say that the office dress code factored into their job choice” (Goldman). Despite the angst associated with Casual Friday wardrobe choices for women, many still seem to value the opportunity to express their personal taste.
Should women be this keen on Casual Friday? Is there a downside to Casual Friday for women?
In a society that makes snap decisions about people’s professional roles based on their wardrobe, Casual Friday might be dangerous for those who do not fit society’s stereotype of leaders.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all physicians who habitually wore street clothing changed to wearing scrubs. Without a clear understanding of how COVID-19 spread, these physicians wore scrubs to work, often changing before they went home to their families to avoid contamination.
As the pandemic waned, many male physicians were reluctant to give up the ease and comfort of wearing scrubs, even when they knew that “real” clothing was not an infectious risk. The women, however, were the first to readopt professional attire.
Dr. M, the pediatrician, and her friend Dr. K, an infectious disease specialist at Mass General Hospital, quickly realized that wearing scrubs in the hospital was an invitation to be asked for nursing help, access to the snack room, or to “call the doctor.” Their male physician husbands noticed no such pattern. Dr. M and Dr. K quickly resumed the sweater-set and knee-length skirt uniform of New England female physicians. Almost overnight, people went back to assuming they were doctors.
Dr. M and Dr. K are not alone. For those who are not part of the majority power structure, dressing casually may undermine their professional authority. In a 1994 survey, 57 percent of women said they believe they “lose status and authority more than men when they dress down for business.” Bernard Jennings, a Black vice president at Norrell Services Inc., explains that when he wears casual business attire, people “assume him to be a janitor or security guard” (Callender).
Casual Friday may pose an even greater risk to professional women than being asked to fetch a cup of coffee. Some lawyers worry that in the more relaxed environment of Casual Friday, offensive and sexist comments, including about female coworkers’ attire, may blossom. In this atmosphere, comments about Casual Friday clothing may be compliments masquerading as harassment (“Casual Fridays and Sexual Harassment”).
It is clear that Casual Friday may change the way women are perceived, including exposing them to harmful and illegal comments. But might Casual Friday do even more damage? Might it change the way people think about themselves?
In a 2015 study, Michael Slepian attempted to show how clothing changes thinking. In a series of experiments in which undergraduate students wore either casual or more formal “job interview” clothing, Slepian et al. showed that wearing formal clothing was associated with more abstract processing, more inclusiveness, and global perceptual processing.
In this study, the improved processing associated with more formal clothing was mediated by “felt power,” or how much power a person believes they have (Slepian). As Slepian explains in an interview with Melissa Dahl, “power leads to abstract thinking – when you’re in a position of power, you don’t have to focus on the details.” Although it is not clear that dressing down causes one to think less clearly or abstractly, Slepian’s work suggests that dressing formally increases one’s self-concept of power and thus ability to lead (Dahl).
It is easy to rage against the rigid and proscriptive nature of Casual Friday for women. Advice blogs and advertising campaigns make it abundantly clear that most women do not embrace a vivid expression of personal taste on Casual Friday. But perhaps this unwillingness to express personal taste is truly their personal taste.
Realizing that their professional standing and leadership still depend upon public perception, some professional women are choosing “boring office clothes” as their Casual Friday aesthetic. As Olga Khazan asks in her ode to Ann Taylor, the epitome of sensible professional women’s wear, rather than criticizing women for boring clothing, “Why not celebrate the women who choose to dress somewhat boringly so they can apply their energies elsewhere?” (Khazan).
Monica Hesse writing in The Washington Post also favors the argument that boring office clothing is self-expression for women who have better things to do. Hesse points out that this nondescript workwear is a choice made by women who would rather do things other than shop (Hesse).
One can read women’s rigid Casual Friday clothing as a reactive response to the judgments of a patriarchal society. Or, in the hands of Hesse and Khazan, one can read women’s deliberate camouflage in this unoriginal uniform as a feminist expression of prioritizing time and authority over personal style.
And yet, this argument sounds more like justification for the status quo than a real understanding of the phenomenon. Even Khazan, the self-expressed Ann Taylor aficionado, cannot get more enthusiastic than “some of the stuff is kind of cute, okay?” (Khazan). By no stretch of the imagination does “kind of cute” match our friend Dr. Y’s unbridled enthusiasm for his flamingo shirt.
For Dr. Y and many men in positions of power and authority, Casual Friday is an opportunity to express their taste by wearing their favorite shirt, no matter how ugly other people find it. For those, like women, who are less secure in their workplace power, Casual Friday is all about blending in, not calling attention to their femininity, avoiding sexually harassing comments, and maintaining their reputations.
Where does that leave today’s professional women? Should they express their personal taste and risk judgment and a lack of advancement from their peers and superiors? Or should they throw caution to the wind and express their personalities by wearing their own metaphorical Hawaiian shirts?
Likely there is no “one size fits all” solution. Perhaps progress will come from the same people who brought us Casual Friday, the market-driven fashion industry. As more women come through the ranks of fashion editors and designers, it seems likely that they will see the opportunity to create and sell a wider variety of Casual Friday clothing to women.
Someday, women may even be able to choose open-toed shoes as their work footwear.
Of course, it is not quite that simple.
Dressing for the job you want might sometimes be inappropriate. Moreover, this pithy wisdom suggests that people dress the same way every day. We know that is not true – an architect does not wear the same clothing to pitch to a client as they do on a construction site. Today, American society has institutionalized the idea of a variable dress code through the invention of Casual Friday.
Casual Friday began in the United States during the mid-1990s. The original idea, from Hewlett-Packard founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard, was that wearing less restrictive clothing would prompt more creative work. Unfortunately, this created a lot of confusion. That void was quickly filled when Rick Miller of Dockers sent a “Casual Businesswear Guide,” filled with “acceptable business casual wear” to 25,000 human resource managers, ushering in the era of chinos as official Friday wear (Husbands).
However, Casual Friday has roots even deeper than the 1990s Dockers revolution. Casual Friday’s roots are found on the island of Hawaii, far from corporate boardrooms and Wall Street. In the 1960s, Mort Feldman, the founder of a Hawaiian clothing company, Kahala, grew frustrated with the incongruity of business people wearing suits and ties to work in Hawaii’s tropical climate. In 1962, he and other Hawaiian shirt manufacturers launched a campaign called “Operation Liberation” to promote men wearing Aloha attire, aka Hawaiian shirts, during the summer. After lobbying the legislature, Hawaii passed a 1967 resolution creating “Aloha Fridays,” which made it mandatory for state legislators to wear Aloha shirts on Fridays (Trufelman).
Clearly, it has got to be more comfortable to wear a Hawaiian shirt than a three-piece suit in 90-degree weather. Likewise, chinos are probably more comfortable than a jacket and tie. But is there a deeper reason or motivation for Casual Friday than just comfort? If so, what is that reason? Is Casual Friday an opportunity for people to express their individual tastes, or is it just a ruse that forces people into expressing societal tastes or norms?
To better explore whether Casual Friday is truly an expression of taste, we must examine why and how employers and workers embrace Casual Friday.
Although Casual Friday is not particularly common in medicine, one local pediatrician, Dr. Y, has latched onto this concept. From April to October, he wears a vibrantly patterned Hawaiian shirt to work every Friday, much to the disgust of many of his partners. Dr. Y is a lifelong New Englander of Irish-Catholic ancestry who happens to own a timeshare on the Big Island. Cultural appropriation, anyone? His favorite shirt is a deep aqua color, printed with large neon pink flamingos. When he wears it, Dr. V, who completed 18 years of parochial education and thinks that wearing polka-dotted socks represents “wild” dressing, has to hide a visible shudder.
One wonders whether Dr. Y is actually wearing the shirt just for that reason. This summer, when someone complimented his pink flamingo shirt, he was overheard proudly announcing, “I wear this shirt because Dr. M hates it.” Dr. M, the female managing partner, does hate this shirt. Perhaps she hates it because it is truly ugly. But perhaps she hates it because, as a woman in a traditionally male field, she would never feel comfortable wearing such an audacious expression of her taste.
Dr. Y obviously relishes the chance to express his personal taste. Is everyone as free as Dr. Y to express their personal taste? The myriad of magazine articles, particularly from the early 90s, explaining in great detail what professional women should wear on Casual Fridays suggest that Casual Fridays might be anything but freeing for some segments of society. Even 20 years after Casual Friday was introduced, Lea Goldman, writing in Marie Claire, bemoaned a work colleague who wore jeans on Casual Friday week after week until she eventually was “marginalized…passed over for all sorts of plum projects and…moved on.” Goldman quotes a female investment bank vice president, who was “horrified” by a young associate wearing open-toed shoes.
After spending several paragraphs explaining the challenges that women face on Casual Friday, Goldman goes on to explain her own solution: to completely avoid Casual Friday by dressing in her usual business attire, a practice which she credits as contributing to her professional success. And then, even after acknowledging that the point of Casual Friday is self-expression, Goldman ends her article with seven bold-face rules for what women ought to wear on Casual Friday.
Even if Casual Friday represents a challenge for women, they still seem enthusiastic. A survey by LinkedIn and Marie Claire reported that 66 percent of women liked Casual Fridays, and 24 percent “say that the office dress code factored into their job choice” (Goldman). Despite the angst associated with Casual Friday wardrobe choices for women, many still seem to value the opportunity to express their personal taste.
Should women be this keen on Casual Friday? Is there a downside to Casual Friday for women?
In a society that makes snap decisions about people’s professional roles based on their wardrobe, Casual Friday might be dangerous for those who do not fit society’s stereotype of leaders.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all physicians who habitually wore street clothing changed to wearing scrubs. Without a clear understanding of how COVID-19 spread, these physicians wore scrubs to work, often changing before they went home to their families to avoid contamination.
As the pandemic waned, many male physicians were reluctant to give up the ease and comfort of wearing scrubs, even when they knew that “real” clothing was not an infectious risk. The women, however, were the first to readopt professional attire.
Dr. M, the pediatrician, and her friend Dr. K, an infectious disease specialist at Mass General Hospital, quickly realized that wearing scrubs in the hospital was an invitation to be asked for nursing help, access to the snack room, or to “call the doctor.” Their male physician husbands noticed no such pattern. Dr. M and Dr. K quickly resumed the sweater-set and knee-length skirt uniform of New England female physicians. Almost overnight, people went back to assuming they were doctors.
Dr. M and Dr. K are not alone. For those who are not part of the majority power structure, dressing casually may undermine their professional authority. In a 1994 survey, 57 percent of women said they believe they “lose status and authority more than men when they dress down for business.” Bernard Jennings, a Black vice president at Norrell Services Inc., explains that when he wears casual business attire, people “assume him to be a janitor or security guard” (Callender).
Casual Friday may pose an even greater risk to professional women than being asked to fetch a cup of coffee. Some lawyers worry that in the more relaxed environment of Casual Friday, offensive and sexist comments, including about female coworkers’ attire, may blossom. In this atmosphere, comments about Casual Friday clothing may be compliments masquerading as harassment (“Casual Fridays and Sexual Harassment”).
It is clear that Casual Friday may change the way women are perceived, including exposing them to harmful and illegal comments. But might Casual Friday do even more damage? Might it change the way people think about themselves?
In a 2015 study, Michael Slepian attempted to show how clothing changes thinking. In a series of experiments in which undergraduate students wore either casual or more formal “job interview” clothing, Slepian et al. showed that wearing formal clothing was associated with more abstract processing, more inclusiveness, and global perceptual processing.
In this study, the improved processing associated with more formal clothing was mediated by “felt power,” or how much power a person believes they have (Slepian). As Slepian explains in an interview with Melissa Dahl, “power leads to abstract thinking – when you’re in a position of power, you don’t have to focus on the details.” Although it is not clear that dressing down causes one to think less clearly or abstractly, Slepian’s work suggests that dressing formally increases one’s self-concept of power and thus ability to lead (Dahl).
It is easy to rage against the rigid and proscriptive nature of Casual Friday for women. Advice blogs and advertising campaigns make it abundantly clear that most women do not embrace a vivid expression of personal taste on Casual Friday. But perhaps this unwillingness to express personal taste is truly their personal taste.
Realizing that their professional standing and leadership still depend upon public perception, some professional women are choosing “boring office clothes” as their Casual Friday aesthetic. As Olga Khazan asks in her ode to Ann Taylor, the epitome of sensible professional women’s wear, rather than criticizing women for boring clothing, “Why not celebrate the women who choose to dress somewhat boringly so they can apply their energies elsewhere?” (Khazan).
Monica Hesse writing in The Washington Post also favors the argument that boring office clothing is self-expression for women who have better things to do. Hesse points out that this nondescript workwear is a choice made by women who would rather do things other than shop (Hesse).
One can read women’s rigid Casual Friday clothing as a reactive response to the judgments of a patriarchal society. Or, in the hands of Hesse and Khazan, one can read women’s deliberate camouflage in this unoriginal uniform as a feminist expression of prioritizing time and authority over personal style.
And yet, this argument sounds more like justification for the status quo than a real understanding of the phenomenon. Even Khazan, the self-expressed Ann Taylor aficionado, cannot get more enthusiastic than “some of the stuff is kind of cute, okay?” (Khazan). By no stretch of the imagination does “kind of cute” match our friend Dr. Y’s unbridled enthusiasm for his flamingo shirt.
For Dr. Y and many men in positions of power and authority, Casual Friday is an opportunity to express their taste by wearing their favorite shirt, no matter how ugly other people find it. For those, like women, who are less secure in their workplace power, Casual Friday is all about blending in, not calling attention to their femininity, avoiding sexually harassing comments, and maintaining their reputations.
Where does that leave today’s professional women? Should they express their personal taste and risk judgment and a lack of advancement from their peers and superiors? Or should they throw caution to the wind and express their personalities by wearing their own metaphorical Hawaiian shirts?
Likely there is no “one size fits all” solution. Perhaps progress will come from the same people who brought us Casual Friday, the market-driven fashion industry. As more women come through the ranks of fashion editors and designers, it seems likely that they will see the opportunity to create and sell a wider variety of Casual Friday clothing to women.
Someday, women may even be able to choose open-toed shoes as their work footwear.
Works Cited
Callender, Ealena. “Does Casual Clash with Success? : Some Women and Minorities Worry That Relaxed Attire Hurts Professional Image.” Los Angeles Times, 25 Mar. 1996, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-25-fi-51076-story.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
“Casual Fridays and Sexual Harassment.” Castronovo & Mckinney, LLC, www.cmlaw.com/new-jersey-sexual-harassment-lawyer/casual-fridays-and-sexual-harassment/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Dahl, Melissa. “The Psychological Case against Casual Fridays.” The Cut, 15 May 2015, www.thecut.com/2015/05/psychological-case-against-casual-fridays.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Goldman, Lea. “The Problem with Casual Fridays.” Marie Claire Magazine, 29 Apr. 2013, www.marieclaire.com/career-advice/tips/a7602/casual-friday-problems/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Hesse, Monica. “For the Professional Washington Woman, Ann Taylor Is Her Muse.” Washington Post, 16 Nov. 2011, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-the-professional-washington-woman-ann-taylor-is-her-muse/2011/11/14/gIQAvYPYSN_story.html?utm_term=.3f94f90dbe6d. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Husbands. “CASUAL FRIDAY.” Husbands Paris, 21 July 2021, husbands-paris.com/en/casual-friday/?amp=1. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Khazan, Olga. “The Case for Boring Office Clothes.” The Atlantic, 10 June 2019, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/ann-taylor/591313/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1HAvirQD5XY7LnRoPqN99oor0dUxyp53QzZTH29xlyugZ3prikW0odOS4. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Slepian, Michael L., et al. “The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 6, no. 6, 2015, pp. 661–668, www.columbia.edu/~ms4992/Publications/2015_Slepian-Ferber-Gold-Rutchick_Clothing-Formality_SPPS.pdf, 10.1177/1948550615579462. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Trufelman, Avery. “Hawaiian Shirts: Articles of Interest #4 - Episode Text Transcript.” 99% Invisible, 5 Oct. 2018, 99percentinvisible.org/episode/hawaiian-shirts-articles-of-interest-4/transcript. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
“Casual Fridays and Sexual Harassment.” Castronovo & Mckinney, LLC, www.cmlaw.com/new-jersey-sexual-harassment-lawyer/casual-fridays-and-sexual-harassment/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Dahl, Melissa. “The Psychological Case against Casual Fridays.” The Cut, 15 May 2015, www.thecut.com/2015/05/psychological-case-against-casual-fridays.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Goldman, Lea. “The Problem with Casual Fridays.” Marie Claire Magazine, 29 Apr. 2013, www.marieclaire.com/career-advice/tips/a7602/casual-friday-problems/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Hesse, Monica. “For the Professional Washington Woman, Ann Taylor Is Her Muse.” Washington Post, 16 Nov. 2011, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-the-professional-washington-woman-ann-taylor-is-her-muse/2011/11/14/gIQAvYPYSN_story.html?utm_term=.3f94f90dbe6d. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Husbands. “CASUAL FRIDAY.” Husbands Paris, 21 July 2021, husbands-paris.com/en/casual-friday/?amp=1. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Khazan, Olga. “The Case for Boring Office Clothes.” The Atlantic, 10 June 2019, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/ann-taylor/591313/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1HAvirQD5XY7LnRoPqN99oor0dUxyp53QzZTH29xlyugZ3prikW0odOS4. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Slepian, Michael L., et al. “The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 6, no. 6, 2015, pp. 661–668, www.columbia.edu/~ms4992/Publications/2015_Slepian-Ferber-Gold-Rutchick_Clothing-Formality_SPPS.pdf, 10.1177/1948550615579462. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Trufelman, Avery. “Hawaiian Shirts: Articles of Interest #4 - Episode Text Transcript.” 99% Invisible, 5 Oct. 2018, 99percentinvisible.org/episode/hawaiian-shirts-articles-of-interest-4/transcript. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.