Bidness Casual

I recently rejoined the ranks of the employed, and one of my first discoveries was that I had virtually nothing in the way of a professional wardrobe. You might think that this issue would occur to me sooner than the night before I was scheduled to start work. You would be wrong.

Trading was useless both in terms of developing transferrable job skills and building a professional wardrobe. My typical trading ensemble consisted of a hoodie, jeans, and flips flops, but apparently Corporate America doesn’t view that as business casual. Well, that is certainly news to me.

Let’s examine the contents of my wardrobe in greater detail:

20% Party dresses
18% Clothing showing inappropriate cleavage
7% Bridesmaid dresses
10% Winter coats
3% Suiting
15% Hoodies
10% Dresses
10% Jeans
2% Button downs
5% Sweaters

Even the numbers are misleading: my suits are all wool and hence entirely inappropriate for sweltering 90 degree summer days. (Plus I’d then be that douchebag wearing a suit in a business casual environment.) The vast majority of my dresses and sweaters are also not warm weather friendly. Come winter, I’ll be looking (professionally) cute, but for the time being I appear to be SOL. I shake my fist at you, summer!

The obvious solution to my wardrobe dilemma? Shopping! Normally I would celebrate the opportunity to shop, but normally I would be shopping for yet more party dresses. Shopping for professional clothing isn’t nearly as fun because most options are of the plain vanilla variety. I’m not a man so I refuse to dress like one. Therefore the slacks and button down uniform is out. Same for the khakis and polo shirt combo.

I am also forced to exclude many fabulous dresses. Mid-thigh hem? Out. Just a bit too clingy? Out. Back zip? Out. (I could write an entire book on how irate I get when I find an amazing dress that zips in the back. Breaking news fashion designers: you render me incapable of dressing myself when you design a dress that zips in the back! While it still works out just fine for the population that is partnered or has roommates, it does not work for me. Either I have to forego your magnificent creations entirely, or I have to sneak into work with my dress halfway zipped and pray that I can get one of my co-workers to zip me the rest of the way up before I run into my boss. I know that Liz Lemon figured out a solution to this vexing problem, but I don’t want my morning routine to include weird contortions on a treadmill. Seriously, I would consider marriage just so I would be guaranteed dressing assistance every morning, infinitely expanding my wardrobe possibilities.)

I was saying? Oh yes, this whole professional wardrobe business is really quite tricky. I can tell you exactly where my first paycheck is going: straight to my good friends J.Crew and Ann Taylor. All of my subsequent paychecks will be routed directly to Sallie Mae.