What To Wear To Work In 2023?

So a question I've been asked frequently this past week is how do I think business dress is going to be going this year? “What do I wear to work in 2023"? Or, “where is it going to be headed in terms of smart casual vs formal?”

I've been having this conversation a lot with my clients, particularly my senior clients who I guess are sort of trying to work things out for themselves, but they're also looking out over a workforce that's a bit mixed at the moment in terms of the way that everybody dresses - it’s very up and down. And they're obviously trying to sort of get their thoughts around their year, their goals and aspirations for the business and what they want to achieve, and getting everybody consistent with that.

So I think the trends that started towards the end of 2022, where we had a lot of people starting to dress up more, is going to continue into 2023. I was calling clients up saying to them,” Hey, like it's time to see you. You know, how's your diary looking next week, I need to prep for smart casual, right? Well, I've got loads of new ideas!”

But a lot of them were saying “no, actually, um, we can look at some smart casual stuff, but actually I need to get a couple suits and some more formal shirts because I'm starting to dress up again. I'm in the office a lot more. And when I'm in the office, it's just easier for me to wear a suit.”

I think that is going to continue - this trend of people starting to dress up more, reach back for the suit more often than they have done the last few years. For men particularly, it's so complex at the moment with all these dress codes like “dress for your day”, “office casual”, “smart casual”, “business casual” - it is really, really confusing! And that's one thing with the YouTube channel and the podcasts that I'm going to try and help more with, over the coming weeks and months.

But here's the thing, with a formal dress code at work, a guy can have between 5 to 10 suits or more. And he's done for a few years work-wise, he doesn't need to think about it anymore. Doesn't matter what the season is, there's very, very little thinking required, you're done for the entire year; spring, summer, autumn, winter, it doesn't matter.

If it's very, very cold, you just wear an overcoat over the top; you always look competent and you always look confident, there's very little thinking required, it takes you minutes to dress in the morning.

The problem with smart casual is you need more of it. And if you need more of it, it's more expensive. So you've got to invest more money in it. And cheap smart casual looks cheap. You have to spend the most that you can afford on smart casual for it to look good and for you to still maintain an air of competence.

So again, something I've mentioned on the podcast a few times recently, you'll have heard me talk about considered dressing, which means you don't have to wear a suit if you don't need to.

But however you dress, you should dress in a way that looks like you actually thought about what you were doing and that shows that you care. How else would you want to project yourself to the world? You don't want to show yourself in the workplace as someone who doesn't care, right? So smart casual, you need a lot more of it.

Also you don't want to be seen in the same thing all the time. For example, you don't want to wear the same distinctive sweater and pair of jeans and whatever you've got on your feet five days a week, every single week. Because people are going to look at you and think “is that the only thing that he's got? They wear that all the time!”

There's a complication too, because when you've got more variety of different items, the shopping and the styling process is a lot more involved. And for most men, that just gives them a massive migraine. So I think people who've been trying to do it and have been struggling for the last couple of years it’s tough to navigate all this if you don’t have a tailor or stylist, someone in your life that can help you navigate through it all.

These are just a few reasons why, particularly with our busiest clients, we're seeing them getting back into suits again, or at the very least a smart trouser and jacket combination (which is essentially a suit, it's just that the jacket and trousers don't match).

Also another factor is that international travel is getting back to normal. So people are receiving international clients again and they're travelling themselves, people are moving around the world again.

Impressions are really important. Whether you meeting someone for the first time or currently, the situation we have is that a lot of us have been conducting our relationships over Zoom and Teams, so now we're meeting in person again. It's almost like you're meeting that person physically for the first time again!

So impressions are really, really important and you never want to offend anyone by being too dressed down. Especially when you're dealing with multiple nationalities and cultures at potentially different times of day. So it's always better to shoot higher in the way that you dress than to set the bar low.

Always better to be overdressed than underdressed that's for sure.

The other thing is that the media is just amplifying everything at the moment, which is why I've basically put myself on a self imposed media ban right now. They're taking every little thing they can in the news and they are just making an absolute mountain out of it. I call it the laziest form of journalism. You know, it's all clickbait headlines which are so misleading as well, like you read a headline and you're compelled to click it, because it sounds like the most awful thing and you want to find out what that awful thing is.

Then you read the article, and it's like, “oh, it's actually not that awful”. Like, what the hell did they make me go and do that for, you've wasted five minutes of your life and got yourself into a negative state of mind. I'm not interested in any of that.

But the fact is, it does happen. And a lot of people are affected by what journalists and the media are putting out there. Fears over the economy not doing well this year leads to fears over jobs. I've been doing this for 20 years. I've started businesses during recessions. In fact when I first got into tailoring we were in a recession, it was the .com bubble bursting.

Then just a few years after that in 2008, we had the credit crunch / the financial crisis. But when you go through periods of depression, that leads to people smartening up, to look busy and to look competent. And to avoid the guillotine of redundancies.

So I do think the pendulum is gradually swinging towards dressing up again. I don't believe that the suit is going to make a full comeback everywhere, because of course, industry plays a factor. And it also plays a factor in dress code, because dress code and industry are quite inextricably linked. If you work in Tech, for example, and you don't really do new business, you don't see clients / you're not client facing, then you can probably wear what you want.

But if you are client facing, you're in a sales role, you're in a presentation role, you're in a senior partner role or similar, then dress codes are obviously going to be a bit smarter for you. If you're in the insurance industry, it's very traditional, tends to be a smarter dress code.

I was with a client yesterday, who is a lawyer. Lawyers have been really dressed down for the last couple of years. But he said that court cases are starting to go back offline again and move to in person. From this spring onwards, there's going to be less cases being dealt with via Microsoft Teams and things like that, and more in person.

So any one in the law profession who's going to have to go and present in court is going to have to get back in to suits again.

So I really, really believe that going forward over the coming months and year, people are going to be, on average, more conscious about how they're presenting themselves to each other and to the world in general. People are going to be reaching for their suits again, or at the very least a much smarter version of the dress casual they’ve been in for the last couple of years.

Even I'm more conscious. And I tend to dress smarter than everybody else most days, if not all days.

2023 is in full swing and it’s time we all started dressing in a more considered manner, no matter what the dress code!