Reader Question: Office Casual, Part 1

Ed, London: Office attire where I work is very casual – a lot of jeans and t-shirts, with only very senior people wearing suits. I’d like to incorporate some more formal or dressy items into my work attire but don’t want to stand out too much. What would you suggest?

I’d start with ties and shoes. Retain the casual benchmark that is a pair of jeans, and try adding smarter shoes and/or knitted ties.

Leather shoes are a whole world of joy, as I’m sure you’ll have realised if you’ve read this blog for very long. Many collectors of upmarket shoes wear them as much with jeans as suits, and doing so gives you a greater range of choices. If you’re going to opt for leather shoes with jeans, bear the following things in mind:

- Shoes with greater bulk or pattern are more casual. So go for brogues or wing-tips. The heavier look of patterned and layered leather shoes makes them sit more comfortably with heavy materials like flannel and denim.
- Suede is a lovely casual option but can be hard to maintain. Make your second or third pair of smart shoes a brown or ginger leather. That way you always have an alternative if it looks a bit wet out (don’t wear suede in the rain if you can help it).
- Go for brown. Whether chocolate, tan or blond, brown shoes will go best with jeans. Black makes you look like a schoolboy and other colours can be hard to wear effectively. (My only exception is red leather, which I think can look great with indigo denim.) Broadly speaking, the darker the brown the darker the jeans should be. But there is much greater flexibility here than with suits.
- Get a good-quality leather belt in a similar hue to wear with your shoes. Again, there is greater flexibility than with suits as to matching the shoes to the belt. But try and find something similar (two browns should be sufficient for all shades of shoe).

Next, ties. Wear a well-fitting shirt with the jeans (all important considering that there will likely be no jacket to cover the shirt). It should fit well both at the waist and at the neck – nothing would remove this outfit’s crispness more than an undone shirt collar.

For ties, anything is good apart from regular silk. Wool works well, as the duller texture suits the trousers and shoes more than silk – which complements polished shoes and worsted wool far better. Particularly good are the narrower, square-ended wool ties.

In that same vein, knitted silk can also work well. It has a shinier hue but the texture makes it inherently more casual. Also cottons or cotton/silk mixes.

This gives you two fantastic areas of menswear to plunder. It should go without saying that the jeans should be traditional and straight cut. No drainpipes or flares please.

(I’m warming to this subject. The next post will explain why textures are the key to getting Ed’s combinations right when he wants to add a jacket or vary the trousers.)

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Introducing the Lazy Fold

Sometimes, just occasionally, I change my mind. While the didactic style of some of these postings might suggest a singleness of purpose, an almost obstinate point of view, I am open to the possibility of evolution. The stuffing of a handkerchief is one such occasion.

In one of my earliest posts on this blog, Tips on Stuffing, I outlined the three most popular ways to arrange a silk handkerchief: pulling the centre to the bottom of the pocket, thus exposing the points; vice versa, exposing the puff; and combining the two by folding the handkerchief in half, displaying both the centre and points.

I used to be a puff person. Exposing the points seemed a little affected except on a special occasion (my wedding, for example, though that was a linen handkerchief). And the folded, combination option does not leave anything at the bottom of the pocket and therefore tends to slip down during the day.

The puff was practical by comparison and a little more understated. However, it had a number of weaknesses, chief amongst which was that differently sized hankies would puff at different heights out of the pocket. The tips could be folded down inside the pocket in order to adjust the height, but that rather defeats the simplicity of the technique and could take a few attempts to get just right.

Instead I revert to what I have christened the Lazy Fold. Stuff one corner of the handkerchief into the pocket until you feel it touch the bottom. Then fold over the rest and stuff it behind, leaving as much silk exposed as you desire.

It’s easy but surprisingly effective. Height is easier to adjust, it’s quick and it never has to be done more than once. What’s more, the fold you create above the pocket is slightly different every time, creasing in a different place. This creates a more casual, less studied look. (Something you want to strive to do with a handkerchief as it will look, to most, rather studied already.)

As a footnote, I also find that if I want to highlight the border pattern of the handkerchief a fold is better than a stuff. This is in direct contrast with my previous posting, which advocated exposing the tips to achieve this effect, and relegated folding to cotton or woollen handkerchiefs.

That is the traditional approach. But in this case I believe I was (whisper it) wrong. It is very hard to display the points of a silk handkerchief without it appearing affected, at least in a business setting – which is where I would be wearing mine almost exclusively.

Try a normal TV Fold instead, with the edges uppermost; it is more subtle. I consider myself evolved.

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Shorten Your Sleeves

I do not have short arms. In fact I’ve always thought them a little long if anything; average at the very least.

Yet every suit I buy has arms that are an inch too long. Surely the rest of the male population with a 40-inch chest can’t have arms that are that much longer?

The truth is, they don’t. Suits are just manufactured with longer arms than average because few men notice that their sleeves are too long. They’d notice if they were too short, as there would be a startling excess of cuff. But an inch or two too long goes unnoticed.

It’s the same with a jacket’s waist. Every off-the-peg jacket is made with a waist that is far bigger than the average for a man of that chest size. Because many thin men don’t notice that it’s too big about the waist. They don’t even do the jacket up most of the time. Yet fat men notice when the waist is too small. The physical discomfort ensures it.

Now I can just buy a 40 short, when the retailer offers it. The jacket will be shorter as well, but I generally prefer that style anyway. But if my arms are longer than average and I’m on the 40 short, what does everyone do that has shorter arms?

They don’t do anything. They let their sleeves be too long and as a result lose one of the joys of formal dressing – that colour combination that occurs at the end of the arm where cuff peeks out of jacket sleeve. If the sleeves are the correct length (shirt stopping at the base of the thumb, jacket at the wrist bone – when arms are at your side) there is a lovely dash of colour at the end of the arm that serves to flatter and highlight its length. It is one of the style loci (see previous post).

A sleeve that is one inch longer than it should be is just enough to cover the shirt cuff, but not enough to look wrong to the untrained eye. So men do not have it altered.

They should do. It is cheap to change, probably around £15 to £20 depending on your tailor – and assuming the jacket does not have working buttonholes. If it doesn’t have buttonholes the tailor can shorten the arm and move one button from the bottom to the top of the row. If it does, the shortening has to be done from the shoulder, with the whole sleeve being unsewn from the main body, shortened and reattached. That will be more like £35 to £40.

If you can change it cheaply, do. It’s another one of those little things that makes a big difference to how an outfit looks.

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The Logical Jacket

It always gets hotter in the afternoon in this office. I don’t know whether the air conditioning is just tired, or the whole building is warming up after a day’s sunshine, but around 3pm it starts to get a little stuffy.

Today, joyously, it’s 3pm, I’m wearing a jacket, and I’m comfortable. The jacket is unstructured, cotton and half lined. It’s the lightest jacket I’ve ever worn by some distance – indeed, many would refer to it as a shirt jacket, I believe. But it’s produced an alternative to The Logical Waistcoat Theory.

For those who missed the original post on this topic, the problem addressed by the Waistcoat Theory was that air conditioning and central heating have made the jacket, whether suit or odd, largely redundant. Office workers take off their jacket when they get in, put it on the back of their chair and only put it on again when they go outside. Indeed, they might not even put it on then if it is a warm day; and if it’s a cold day they might prefer an overcoat.

The jacket is rarely worn, meaning that the suit is rarely worn in its entirety and loses many of its flattering aspects. There is also more pressure on the shirt fitting well, the tie is dragged out of its normal position and loses a little of its elegance, and most depressingly, people just don’t wear jackets – probably the most satisfying and defining aspect of menswear.

The advertising for suits looks a little silly all of a sudden, given that men only wear that full outfit for a small proportion of their day.

The waistcoat is a possible solution, as it is easier to wear all day long. It is elegant, keeps the tie tucked in, lengthens the silhouette and can be worked in at a desk quite comfortably.

The lighter jacket is another solution; one which is likely to find greater appeal I’m sure, given that some still have prejudices against the waistcoat. These half-lined jackets have been quite prevalent the last two summers, and can be picked up at many of the top-line retailers. Mine was found in the summer sale at Aquascutum, in navy and double-breasted.

(Regular readers will note that my declaration to never buy off-the-peg jackets did not last long. My only defence is that it was very good value, being 70% off, and would have been hard to get made by a tailor used to worsted suits and little else.)

Despite only being sold in the summer, these cotton jackets should be worn the whole year in my opinion. The key is for an office-worker to think of his outfit in two senses – what he wears inside and what outside. The cotton jacket is a way to make the inside outfit more dressy and flattering, as is the waistcoat. Outside an overcoat or not can be added depending on the weather.

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A Dreamed-up Tie Tuck

As has often been lamented on this site, ties don’t perform the role they once did. Waistcoats are worn less, jackets are largely taken off when working, and even when jackets are worn they are frequently left unbuttoned. As a result, the tie has lost its place as a pert little dash of silk at the top of an outfit. Without the constraint of waistcoat or jacket, it flops, it twists and it waves.

There are a few posited solutions. You could wear your jacket more or bloody-well do it up; but I am unlikely to change people’s habits here. You could tuck it into the shirt; but this, while perhaps fashionable, is too much a quirk for most. You could switch to bow ties, which I know many do, particularly in jobs where they are often unable to wear a jacket. At least a bow tie remains consistently spruce and taut.

Most obviously, you could wear a tie clip. This can look stylish if done well, though apparently it should always be worn at an angle, rather than parallel to the floor (I can see why this might be more flattering – a horizontal rarely benefits an outfit, unless it is a handkerchief). Tie clips, however, often seem to be strangling a tie. Yes, the top half is now pert, but the bottom half is contorted and – if you listen very closely – emits a small choking sound.

A local tailor around here solves this problem, I have noticed, by wearing a vertical tie pin that enters the tie and then emerges again two inches lower, fastened with a small silver ball. This certainly spreads the area of pressure, reducing contortion, but it does also mean piercing the tie, twice. It’s not something I am eager to try without greater knowledge as to how one avoids damage to the tie.

So, having dismissed all other options, we come to a little something I dreamed up yesterday. Here’s how it works. Tie your tie as normal, then take the rear blade and loop it underneath one of the buttons on your shirt (the third one seems to work well for me) so it emerges from the shirt again on the other side of the button. Then tuck the rear blade into the loop of silk normally attached to the front blade.

The rear blade will be in its normal position, tucked into this silk loop and thus attached to the front blade. But is also anchored to the shirt a little further down, reducing flap, twist and wave.

Having experimented with a few ties, the effectiveness of this technique seems to vary considerably with the height of the silk loop on the front blade. Whatever its position, though, pick a shirt button that is as close to the loop as possible.

Have fun.

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