The rise of geek culture had the added effect of revolutionizing how employees dress in the workplace. Desk jobs in sectors like technology encourage workers to dress more comfortably and spread from there.
Currently, employees dress more casually at work than in previous decades. That said, the debate over casual and formal clothing has increased in recent months on social media apps like X/Twitter and TikTok.
Some people who are against wearing casual clothes to work tend to say that casual clothes give the impression to customers that employees are lazy, don’t take their work seriously, or that the business itself isn’t professional.
While not every job sector is suited for casual clothing, a person’s work ethic shouldn’t be tied to their clothing. Those who wear casual clothing in the workplace seem to be going against the standards of an ideal employee. Additionally, people enjoy not feeling suffocated in formal attire and see comfy clothes as a way to stay relaxed.
Events like the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to rethink their lives in their workplaces. The sudden boom in remote work jobs had people realizing that they could have the same workload in their office done at home on their own desks. With more remote work jobs, the need to dress formally at their jobs dropped since people were largely working at home.
Now that employers have tried to reduce remote work jobs, many people are clinging to the experiences that they have had and have liked while working remotely. Comfy clothes have their space at work, and while employers have a right to dictate what employees can and cannot wear at their workplace, positions like remote work open the playing field.