C an you wear shorts to work? If your office dress code is the laid-back modern sort, the short answer is probably yes. If you can wear a T-shirt rather than a shirt, or a dress without tights, if jackets are optional, then yes, you can wear shorts to work. But that doesn’t answer the question.
Take me, for instance. The Guardian offices are pretty much dress-code-free. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from wearing shorts to work.
But can I? Would I? That’s a whole different question. And it is one that more of us are asking. An unpredictable climate is blurring the lines between clothes for the summer months at home and holiday pieces, and there are sound economic and environmental reasons to have a wardrobe of versatile pieces that can multitask.
On the high street, I’m hearing that the dresses selling best this summer are those that can be dressed up for a wedding or down for a holiday dinner, for instance. So why should shorts be off-limits just because you are on-duty? But there is more to dressing well for work than being able to follow a dress code, just as there is more to being good at your job than not reneging on your job description. Being good at your job – or at anything, actually – is about standards, as much as it is about skills.
I think this is one of the reasons why wearing shorts in the office feels tricky. We associate shorts with activities for which we deliberately dress down, perhaps because whatever you wear will get grubby or sweaty .