Fashion Terms — the Apparel Search fashion terminology directory
In many business settings in the United States, the tailored suit was the dress code for men, and formal dress governed women's workplace fashion as well. As society became more “relaxed”, so did the dress code. Casual Friday — also known as dress-down Friday or casual day — is the result: a trend that has spread around the globe, in which business offices that usually require formal dress relax their dress code on Fridays. This page traces the term and what it means for workplace wardrobes.
In many business settings in the United States, the tailored suit was the dress code for men. As society became more "relaxed" so did the dress code for both men's and women's workplace fashion.
Casual Friday (also known as dress-down Friday or casual day) is a Western dress code trend that started toward the end of the 20th century. Casual Friday was the term used when some business offices relax their dress code on Fridays.
Some businesses that usually require employees to wear suits, dress shirts, neckties, and dress shoes, started to allow more casual wear on Fridays. This slowly lead to a more casual dress code for all days of the week at many companies.
When the weekend is getting close, be sure to thank your company for their Casual Friday policy. It might be time to trade in your suits, business skirts, and dress shirts for something a little more comfortable.
What should we wear of Friday? Casual Friday means something different for each individual company. At more formal business environments where people typically wear suits, appropriate casual attire may be khakis or business casual trousers, a button-front shirt, and no tie for men. However, when a company is business casual on other days, you may be able to wear jeans.
Learn about casualwear.
Do you know the difference between casual wear and leisure wear?
Casual Friday mattered out of proportion to one weekday because it was the crack in a rigid system. Once employees had dressed down successfully on Fridays — clients served, work done, nothing lost — the argument for formality on the other four days weakened year by year, and many companies eventually made every day business casual. The Friday experiment also created the modern problem it is famous for: without a uniform to default to, every employee had to interpret “casual” personally, and interpretations ranged from a blazer without a tie to beachwear. Human resources departments responded with written policies, and “Casual Friday” became as much a defined dress code as the formality it replaced.
For the clothing industry the shift was a market event. A workforce dressing casually even one day a week bought different clothes: knit polos instead of a fifth suit, chinos and loafers instead of trousers reserved for the office, and eventually entire categories — premium denim for work, wrinkle-free casual shirts, dress sneakers — built to live in the gap Casual Friday opened. The neighboring term, casual wear, covers the clothing category as a whole; this page's term names the workplace ritual that helped make that category the default for much of modern working life.
A workplace policy under which employees may dress more casually on Fridays than on other workdays — dress-down Friday. Offices that require suits or formal business attire Monday through Thursday permit relaxed clothing to close the week.
As one expression of a broader relaxation of dress codes, helped along by employers who found a weekly dress-down day was a cheap morale benefit and by the spread of business casual generally. The practice began in the United States and spread around the globe, as this page notes.
It depends on the employer's policy, and the safe reading is one step down from your normal office standard, not weekend wear: clean jeans or chinos and a collared shirt or neat knit in most offices that allow it, avoiding sportswear, shorts and ripped clothing unless the policy clearly includes them.