What To Wear on Casual Fridays

Casual Fridays and Casual Dress for Men

Many organizations these days have adopted casual Fridays and casual days at the office.

What you wear at the office on these casual days stays with you all week.  What this means is that if you don't dress appropriately on the occasional dress down days, can give you the wrong reputation the rest of the work week.

The most basic and accepted look of casual days are a polo shirt - also known as golf shirts - and a pair of casual dress slacks or neatly pressed khakis and clean well polished loafers.

While this almost seems simplistic, quite a number of people will get this wrong.  How can you get this simple outfit wrong you ask?  The polo shirt we are talking about is generally clean, pressed, not faded, not frayed, tucked into your pants and of generally slightly higher quality.  Now does that sound like something you might wear to the beach?  Absolutely not.  Yet, surprisingly many will show up with just that.

Our advice is to ensure that you have two types of polo shirts in your closet.  For the office, we recommend mercerized cotton polo shirts or golf shirts.  Mercerized cotton is spun so finely that it looks and feels like silk.

An alternative to the polo or golf shirt is a simple pale blue faintly striped dress shirt worn with an open collar and a white crew neck undershirt.  Additionally, dress down Fridays are also a great day to wear a conversational tie.  Conversational ties are generally the ones you would not typically wear during the week.  As a suggestion, try our conversational ties from our Jerry Garcia ties category, or view our regular selection of ties for something a little different.  If you're the type that generally don't like to wear anything other than a conservative necktie during the week, try wearing some pink ties on Friday just to get comfortable with something just a little edgier.

As for slacks, while khakis are generally acceptable, to make a really good impression, we recommend you wear twill or worsted wool dress slacks.

As another alternative to twill and worsted wool,  try gabardine trousers which are generally slightly heavier in weight, and because of the weight tend to drape beautifully, especially if you are wearing a pleated style.

Lastly, sport jackets are always handy to have around and a navy blue, two button sport jacket will end up being your favorite accessory.

In general, our advice is that on casual days or Fridays at the office - leave your beachwear at home and have a few better made slacks and polo shirts handy for a really elegant, yet casual look.