What do smart casual, cocktail and formal actually mean?
Every dress code on your year-end invites is a place you've already been. Let me break it down.
Nowadays, most people only know two dress codes, casual and formal. Anything in between, they don't really know what to do with. And I totally empathise with people who struggle with this. The only reason I can even put this struggle into words is that I grew up in this world.
Casual
Casual is what you'd wear to a picnic in the park with your closest friends or your family. Something very low stakes.
But casual in Amsterdam is not the same as casual in Singapore. Casual in Singapore is a t-shirt and shorts. And the climate that you live in changes it a lot as well.
Smart casual
Smart casual is your friend's birthday at the restaurant or the diner that you always go to. Comfortable, but still nice.
To me, smart casual is almost an oxymoron. When someone says dress smart, most of us think of office wear. And then when someone says casual, it could be such a huge range. It could be a tank top, it could be a maxi skirt, it could be jeans, it could be a tube top. So when you put those two words together, it gets really subjective.
So honestly, hot take: smart casual is a cop-out dress code. You're basically saying you want people to look presentable and not sloppy, but then you're not devoting any more energy to it. When I see smart casual, I hear: just don't come naked.
In the video, I show you the difference with one outfit. Same white tank, same navy pants. On the left, the tank is out. On the right, it's tucked in. That's the only thing that changed. Tank out is the picnic in the park. Tucked in is your friend's birthday at the place you always go.
Cocktail
Cocktail started at real cocktail parties, the Great Gatsby kind of cocktail parties at someone's house. Glittery, drinking, dancing. You can't wear a floor-length gown to that, because one, you're taking up too much space on the dance floor, and two, you can't move. You would be fussing about your train all night.
I don't know anyone who's been to a classic cocktail party recently. Nowadays, if you see cocktail on an invite, it's usually some kind of networking thing, and people either turn up in house-party clothes or go straight to formal. And that's too far in either direction.
I wouldn't explain cocktail as what you would wear to a nice restaurant either, because that is just as subjective. At a nice restaurant, I could be wearing a maxi dress, I could be wearing a skin-tight midi dress, I could be wearing a strappy mini dress. And it also depends on the restaurant, and the weather. Cocktail would be like a New Year's Eve party. Drinking, dancing. You don't want to be encumbered.
Formal
But formal is the easy one, right? For men, formal is a jacket, pants, shirt. What you think of when you imagine what a lawyer wears to court. Formal is the gala, the ball, the wedding dinner at a luxury five-star hotel. To me, it's the stuff I grew up thinking, oh, when I'm an adult, I get to wear that.
So to put two dress codes side by side: a wedding lunch at a luxury five-star hotel is cocktail, and a wedding dinner at the same venue is formal. So the time of day matters as well.
Lately, I even see people getting away with wearing smart casual at a wedding. It is deplorable, but it's what people expect.
An invitation to get creative
So those are the four dress codes. I feel like the art of the dress code is pretty dead right now.
And I'm just ruminating here, but a dress code used to be a tool. It helped people avoid embarrassment, and it made sure everyone at the same event at least started off on the same foot. Now people take it as a rule for what to wear, as opposed to an invitation to get creative, which is how I like to see it. And for me, creativity needs restrictions to push you to show off your personal flair and your own take.
So that restriction is where I start with every client. We start with the line on the invite, and then my client's personal colours, their body shape, what they like, what they don't like, anything they want to hide or show off, and what they already have in their wardrobe.
So here's what to do with the invite in your inbox. Send me the dress code line from your next invite on WhatsApp. Send me the exact words on the invite, and I'll tell you what that line is actually asking for.
Off The Cuff: real-world style questions, answered every Tuesday
If you’re building a company or leading a boardroom, they’re probably your questions too, like what “smart casual” on an invite actually means. Every Tuesday, I write to you about that week’s topic, the way I’d say it out loud. Reply to any of them and I’ll write back myself. Yes, really. ;)