It’s not a written rule, but when others around follow “power dressing” then you ought to be at work in formals too. Even if that means strangulating yourself in a sweat-soaked necktie when the mercury outside does an Usain Bolt, ie, shattering its previous records at the rate of knots. So, in the sweltering heat and soaring humidity like ours, it only made sense for corporates to move to a casual dressing norm for office.
Employees strive to create informal work cultures these days, informs, Randhir Kumar, engineer at Microsoft, saying, “In campus, casual-formal dressing, everything goes. People often turn up in their shorts and floaters, never formal.” Companies encourage people to turn up as they are, no formal-ities, he believes.
Seconds, Mahima Chawla, Web Designer with 6UP, Gurgaon, avers, “There isn’t a dress code, but employees do prefer formals on the first three days, semi-formals for the next two and Saturdays are more jeans and tee kinds. But barring a few fields like marketing and high management levels, overall it simply isn’t about the attire anymore. You won’t be bothered if you perform well, then dressing ceases to matter.”
It makes sense to move to a casual dressing workplace. Firstly, comfortable casuals help those, who work for long hours at a desk, And secondly, the water-tight difference between formal and casual dressing is blurring with dressing lines like semi-formals and business casual dressing.
At most workplaces today, apart from seriously offending stuff like Dr Martens’ shoes and ripped jeans, anything goes. Jayant A., project manager with a Hyderabad-based MNC, says colleagues stick to a formal attire while meeting clients and remain in casuals otherwise, and adds, “It was different initially, when I began as a trainee at NTPC, we were in awe of our boss, who was always nattily dressed in a suit even in the summer heat. But only those who have to step out of an airconditioned car into a centrally cooled office and return to an airconditioned home again can manage to dress like that. When working for long hours, casual attire is more comfortable, one feels relaxed when there isn’t a knot on the Adam’s apple.” Organisations like Wipro also aren’t very picky on office attire, he says.
And for some who although have no hard and fast dressing rules at work, the job requires them to be dressed for the occasion. Abhishek Tiwari, consultant at ONGC, talks about these kind of office dressers, and says, “When in office, we can dress up according to our taste, but when at site we have a dungaree and helmet provided to protect ourselves from the mud and oil. When onsite it hardly matters what one wears under the protective gear.”