How To: Wear Weekend Clothes to Work

August 29th, 2005

Picture yourself in your closet on a typical Monday morning.

If you’re anything like us, you see more weekend clothes than workday clothes. With a greater range of colors, fabrics, and silhouettes, they’re just more fun to wear. It’s just a shame that they’re fully appropriate only two days out of the week.

Or so you may think.

We try to liberate these fun loving clothes from the closet as often as we can, covering ourselves with the Law of Weekend Clothes at Work. Simply put, the Law states that, in a business casual office, you are allotted one (1) weekend appropriate item per outfit, given that you surround that item with suitably business appropriate clothes.

Why does it work? Well, the formality of the rest of the outfit serves to elevate the look of the one casual piece. Note that the one item part of the law is more of a guideline, rather than a strict rule. With one casual item, you usually can’t get into too much trouble. For those of you who enjoy a challenge, however, we encourage you to try two or more items. If you want to share a cool outfit idea, (or if on the other hand, you run into problems) feel free to contact us at styleintelligence@gmail.com.

Now let’s look at two common examples of the rule in action.

For women: Say you want to wear your favorite t-shirt to work.

Sabrina Embellished Tee | $39.50 at Abercrombie and Fitch

Dress it up with a cardigan, skirt, and a pair of heels. An added bonus—on the off chance that you’re perceived as unapproachable at work, the addition of a personal item to your look can go a long way to softening your image.

For men: This example is perfect for the man with one (or two, or ten) too many pairs of jeans in the closet.

“Faded Away” Jean | $89 at Kenneth Cole

Pair your jeans (no wild washes or treatments, please) with dress shoes, a blazer, and a sport shirt. The quintessential dot-com entrepreneur look, yes, but you’ll be backing it up with more than buzzwords like “mindshare” and “eyeballs.”

Entry Filed under: How To,Men's,Women's