Smart casual is new normal for office dressing says Travelodge survey

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 29, 2018

Dressing down is increasingly the norm in offices across the UK with those men who wear a suit or women who dress formally "sticking out like a sore thumb,” a new study has shown.

A survey by hotel chain Travelodge spoke to 2,000 UK adults and found that only around 10% wear a suit to work with 75% dressing down on a daily basis.

Only half of workplaces now have a dress code and the move towards casual office-wear means such dress codes have been widened to take in what is and isn’t acceptable when dressing down.

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This marks a huge change in the last couple of decades with the ‘casual Friday’ dressing that made headlines in the 1990s having now spread out to take in Monday through Thursday too. Smart casual is the new normal.

Some 25% of workers surveyed believe that dressing casually takes away from the pressure that they feel at work and also encourages colleagues to be more friendly to each other.

And the survey respondents also listed the items that are now on their ‘don’t wear’ lists with ties, waistcoats and high-waist trousers being top to avid for men, while a skirt suit and shoulder pads are least favourite for women.

Travelodge said it had noticed a sharp decline in the number of business travellers checking in to its hotels in suits and also the formal items that often get left behind have declined with fewer suits, cufflinks and tie pins being forgotten.

A side effect of this also means that travellers are carrying fewer items of clothing when they’re on business trips.