Yes, I understand he really is wearing casual clothes to work. I was just trying to illustrate that there are wide discrepancies in what people wear, what’s appropriate, etc. In previous jobs, casual Friday for me meant no suit. Now I’m at a place where casual Friday means Jeans are fine.
“Casual Friday” does not seem to make much sense. If casual dress is acceptable on Friday, why not every day? If it is not acceptable on any other day, why is it acceptable on Friday?
When I worked in LA, we could wear jeans on Friday. We still wore dressy tops and nice shoes. When a 50+ new staff member came in casual jeans! gym sneaks! ponytail! I knew that was a no-no. On. Monday, she was fired, allegedly for weak notes.
I make sure Mr. dresses up a notch on Fridays, because that’s when we go out to dinner after work! 
@bookworm – I have found slim cut, no iron shirts at BB. My son wears 15.5/35 shirts and 40L suit jacket with 33 W pants. (Swimmer’s build that morphed a bit after dropping swimming at the end of HS. Had to have suit pants let out an inch in the waist.)
I tried finding that size of shirt at Costco but they didn’t carry it. I was able to find a decent black wool overcoat at Costco for a great price.
Anyone looking for khakis for tall, slim teens/young men—Old Navy. I buy nothing else in the store, but their khakis are really well made, very inexpensive, and are sold in 36L. However, they are not wrinkle-free.
For a while, in the late 90s, when we went to business casual on Fridays, my law firm put a sign in the lobby every Friday that said, “XYZ firm follows a business casual dress code on Fridays.” This was an attempt by the firm’s fuddy duddies to make sure the clients knew we were not just slobs.
I can pinpoint the start of the dress code revolution in law firms to a very short time frame. I left on maternity leave in 1995, and took off about 16 months after my daughter was born. Before I left all the women attorneys wore skirt suits with hose every day. I was shocked to see women in pants when I came back to work. And, before I left for maternity leave, there was actually a debate at the firm as to whether men should be allowed in the attorney dining room in shirt-sleeves at lunch. The answer was, only if we didn’t have an outside speaker. Otherwise jackets were mandatory. It went without question that men had to wear ties at all times. When I came back from maternity leave, there were some male attorneys walking around without ties (let alone without jackets). Shocking!
It was totally the result of the tech boom. The tech folks wanted their lawyers to dress casually at meetings.
Interestingly, we’d always had entertainment clients who wore scruffy clothes to meetings. But they wanted their lawyers dressed up in sharp suits.
Anyway, this thread just reminded me of that history and how quickly things changed in that narrow window of time.
Hmmm, does he complain about the shirts being too big around the abdomen?
http://www.brooksbrothers.com/bb-size-guide-men/bb-size-guide-men,default,pg.html indicates that 15.5" neck size matches up to 36" waist size. The 4" drop between chest and waist that Brooks Brothers lists is what is called “portly” cut. “Regular” is 6" drop, and “athletic” (can be hard to find in the US) is 8" drop.
Once again, it depends entirely on (1) the field you’re in and (2) your geographic location. Things that would be unthinkable to bankers are the norm for professors, and vice versa; things that are fine in Charlotte are downright bizarre in Seattle, and the other way around.
(And that’s not even mentioning the idiosyncratic culture of any given office.)
While acceptable work dress certainly varies, a place where T shirt and shorts are acceptable would simply say it has “casual”, not “business casual”, dress.
Exactly. My office code is casual - jeans and sneakers are perfectly acceptable. But we don’t say it’s business casual. It’s casual. Business casual is turning it up a notch - adding a cardigan, blazer, nice shoes, etc. if clients come in, we tell our staff to go business casual which is a step up from casual. I dress business casual when I lead workshops with clients. All my clients are business casual. I never see “full suits” anymore.
Dfb, no one was doubting that there are different norms in different places. We were doubting that places that allow t-shirts, shorts and flip flops self-describe their dress code as “business casual.” That is the dress code in plenty of places but that’s not “business casual,” it’s casual. NTTAWWT.
Ucb, you’ve mentioned this issue numerous times. My h and s are both slim build and don’t have a single issue finding clothes off the rack that fit them. Do you have an unusual build?
“Casual Friday” does not seem to make much sense. If casual dress is acceptable on Friday, why not every day? If it is not acceptable on any other day, why is it acceptable on Friday?"
Because it’s a perk businesses that require more formal dress can give their employees - that the employees like and doesn’t cost the firm a penny to implement. That’s why. Other small perks a firm could offer (free soft drinks, whatever) cost money. You’re thinking too linearly.
I think business casual may have developed from the summer notion of going off to your beach house on summer weekends and not wanting to have to spend time on the bus/train in your suit. And making Friday more relaxed is a thing. In Germany our office was almost empty by 3pm on Fridays. (People worked longer hours the rest of the week.) My son’s internship has them check emails from home on Fridays in the summer - they won’t go in unless there’s a crisis.
Our company went business casual during a strike. Salaried workers were called to fill in for the union mechanics. Because there was some picketing and harassment by the strikers, management declared business casual to be the dress code so that it was harder to tell who driving through the gates was working a “strikebreaker” job and who was doing regular office work. After the strike we never went back.
We had a jeans day almost every Friday. Usually we did this as a fundraiser for a charity…folks contributed to the cause, and wore jeans. A sign was posted telling what the charity of the day was. Sometimes we were allowed to wear jeans as a special perk…like the day after conferences were completed.
Otherwise, no jeans were permitted…or shorts…or flip flops.
My husband on,y wears a suit when he is making a formal presentation. That happens about once a month. But he has a sports jacket and tie at work just in case he needs it. His office is business casual.
OP
Err on the side of conservative, no matter what some other areas or companies allow. You get him started and you can mail or mail order polos if things are more casual.
Nice slacks (doesn’t need to be suit pants. Even DH wore good Dockers.). Khaki and navy. Then if his office is very conservative, he has the dark.
A few Oxford (the weave) button down shirts. He can roll up the sleeves. Light blue is usually fine, less formal than white but not so casual. Yes, maybe some striped or if he likes tattersall. Lands End has these.
With all this advice, he’ll be fine. But the old rule for young employees was dress “up” a step.
@ucbalumnus – here is a link that shows the dimensions for BB’s four different cuts. Apparently they have changed all of the names–AGAIN! They now offer an extra slim cut.
My son needs a seven inch drop and the slim cut fit him very well. (He had needed an eight in drop while swimming. I was thrilled to learn that men’s pants have an extra couple of inches of fabric sewn into the waistband.)
It appears that there is a seven inch difference in waist dimension when moving from largest cut to slimmest cut.
http://www.brooksbrothers.com/dressshirtfitguides/dressshirtfitguides,default,pg.html
We are making a push here in our corporate headquarters for jeans all summer. Right now it is Friday only, and, technically, you had to donate to United Way to get the jeans Fridays, but we don’t police that (for many reasons). I don’t think we’ll get the “jeans summer” and part of that is because people don’t always use the best judgment. When I wear jeans on Friday I still wear nice shoes (sandals or boots) and a nice top and even blazer most days (I freeze in the office). Others look ready for yardwork. We do allow sports team shirts on Fridays, and I suspect management doesn’t want to see that all week long. Interestingly, due to the business we are in, when we go out in the field to visit our locations/stores, we dress down and usually wear jeans or khakis and a company logo shirt. We try hard to not be “those big-wigs from corporate”. I think females can get away with a lot in terms of business casual, especially here in the south. If you throw a blazer or nice cardigan on, the bottom layer can be pretty casual or trendy.
Apparently unusual enough that much of the off-the-rack stuff is either tight around the chest or too loose around the abdomen.