It's Casual, Business Casual

Business Commandment Number One: There is nothing casual about business casual. Many companies view business casual as a conglomeration between causal weekend clothes and formal business separates.  While business casual is applicable to a wide variety of workplaces, it is often interpreted in varying degrees. For corporations that have expectations to wear pant suits daily such as State Farm, where I interned this past summer, business casual should be more formal such as this outfit by Lauren Conrad.

For me, it meant wearing a State Farm t-shirt with nice black pants. With corporations that have a daily sales uniform, like Coyote Logistics, business casual may be dressing in khakis and a nice polo such as this look by Polo Ralph Lauren

According to Eric Davis, a writer for the Institute for Productivity, workplace dress affects morale more than it affects productivity in the workplace. His argument from a global survey completed in 24 countries shows that “45% of workers think that someone wearing casual clothes is more productive that someone wearing business attire, yet 55% of clients perceives someone wearing more proper workplace attire as more productive.” To put it plain and simple, when acting as an employer, men and women would rather wear comfortable clothes; however, when acting as the customer, men and women would rather have their employer wearing business professional.  While I cannot give concrete rules to decide whether to wear business casual or professional, I can tell you that by using WWCD (What Would Your Company Do), you can exemplify the professional image of your company, while still feeling confident in your own clothing. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it." Although the term, business casual, cannot be defined, it can and DOES define your personal professional image....There's nothing casual about that!