In Casual – Formal Out

Business suits and dressing for work is soon becoming an outdated concept across the world. Many companies are coming up with the term – business-casuals to denote work wear at offices or official meetings. With the growing competition and exhaustive work environment, this seems to be a new way to allure human capital towards their organization. A good compensation, perks and performance bonus are definitely key parameters due to which a person shifts from one company to another, but in addition to that better office environment and dressing less formally is also seen as a perk. However, casual dress code seems to be in trend when the markets are behaving food and it is more of an employee friendly market place determined by them.
In places where meetings are with clients who themselves find it uncomfortable to do business deals with people dressed in coat-suit, casual outfit comes-in. This entire idea of semi-formal dressing gives employees to maintain their individualistic approach in dressing up and is an encouragement for them to be unique. This is a chance given to employees’ particularly in the creative field of business to think out of the box and also gives them mental freedom to work at ease.
Business casuals are often used as a term to describe the dress code of office hours or for an official meeting, but it is an ambiguous word. The definition of this is not known to many, who are even working for corporate. There is a culture developed by multi-national companies of “work from home” which typically allows employees to be productive by staying at home and working with their pyjamas on. For a Skype call related to business, what they need to wear on is a casual t-shirt. So, businesses these days has become technology –driven and dressing formally has become an almost obsolete concept. Companies have started naming last working day of the week as “casual day” at workplaces.

Further, mentioning about casual wear and its acceptability in general public apart from the office goers in India, this has reached on higher levels. Casual clothes have more than arrived in Indian retail markets and have made its presence. Retail markets have made categories of casual clothes, namely – business casuals, smart casuals, resort casual and party wear. Casual-wear in female segment has gained a lot of variety in terms of styling and fashion clothes. Many brands have entered in this segment and have been doing reasonably well. People have been introduced to this concept through shopping malls and multi-brand showrooms. Also, an add-on booster to this category of clothing is denim and their types.
People living in cities are fashion –conscious and prefer wearing the latest “in-trend” outfit be it any category of clothing. Consumers preferring casuals have given retailers an opportunity to bring in their popularity by introducing innovative designs, categorization like premium, luxury etc. in the casual clothing segment itself, and price-sensitive customers are also left with many choices to dress casually yet smartly. The high ratio of money out of the pockets is spent by youth on clothes and their looks and that has contributed to a large extent towards increasing lifestyle products and apparels. Many brands have made themselves available online through e-marketing in this segment and that has led to phenomenal growth in their businesses just by casual wear sales.
So, formal clothing is out to a larger extent as compared to past decades, because of individuals looking up for differentiation, change in consumer behaviour, change in mindset at workplaces etc.