What to Wear to Work

There it was – right below the time and place on the invitation for the work-related anniversary reception.  “Business Cocktail Attire Preferred.”

What in the world was that?  These two types of attire are very different…or so I thought.  In my mind, I think of “business attire” as a business suit or, you know, something with a blazer.  A cocktail dress is that really fancy dress that isn’t quite an evening gown that you buy for the fundraiser, and then it sits in your closet for years because you have nowhere else to wear it.  I would have thought that these two modes of dress couldn't have been further apart on the fashion spectrum. Oh, did this mean that I had missed the memo about the new business fashion trend again?  I just can’t keep up sometimes.

First there was the whole “business casual” thing.  That seemed like an oxymoron to me, too, when I first heard it.  Oh, it was all so simple once.  Business was business and casual was casual.  Then the line blurred.  “They” explained it to me.  Basically, it meant dressing somewhere between the business suit and the ratty blue jeans with your Led Zeppelin t-shirt.

Once I wrapped my head around it though, it was okay.  It meant that we could be more comfortable while we worked without necessarily looking like we were camping or painting the house. That isn’t a bad thing.

 

For me, it all comes down to the shoes.  Business casual dress at work means that I can dress to accommodate wearing sensible shoes all the time.  With age comes wisdom and arthritic knees, and the realization that looks are in the end secondary to function.  This means that the ultimate goal of wearing shoes is the ability to walk- with as few complications as possible.  Trust me, any podiatrist or arthritis doctor will basically recommend that you wear Level Three Fitness Sneakers all the time.

Level Three Fitness Sneakers look stupid with a dress, but if they’re black, you can pretty much get away with them with a nice pair of slacks, which is what I now wear most of the time.  I still like to wear skirts and dresses on occasion, and I have some acceptable semi-sensible-but-not-exactly beautiful-or-cutting-edge shoes for those occasions.  To risk dating myself, I have to say that I like to wear pantyhose with a skirt, even though it seems that they have fallen out of fashion favor, and are suddenly harder to find.

Now, when in doubt, I still like to err on the side of “business” over casual, and I think that dressing “up” a little in certain business settings can only gain you some respect.  My philosophy is that if you wear a nice blazer over almost anything, it looks more professional.

I thought I had it all figured out, and now they were throwing the “business cocktail attire” concept at me.  Did they mean you could wear either business OR cocktail attire?  Were they looking for some hybrid between business and cocktail attire?  If that were the case, what exactly would that look like?  

After rifling through my closet several times and trying on more than a few outfits, I settled on a dress with matching jacket that was not a business suit although I wore it on the job all the time.  It seemed to do the trick despite the sensible shoes.