Is there any dress code for professionals working in offices in the UK?
I work in an architectural firm in London, and anything (within reason) goes. We would regard a clothes policy as far too reactionary. If you have to go and meet clients and so on you will need to wear shoes, a suit that kind of thing. If you don’t scrub up well, of course, that is unlikely to happen, so it doesn’t hurt to dress a bit ambitiously/imaginatively. Suffice to say you can tell the difference between students and senior staff by the way they dress. All in all – it is better to be freshly laundered and well groomed if you don’t want to upset your fellow workers. In that regard jeans or chinos that can go in the machine are far more prefererable to some manky suit that never gets to see the inside of a dry cleaners. (Yuk). In the old days of drawing in ink it was foolhardy to wear anything good – as it is still is if you spend a lot of time on site where comfort and practicality takes precedence. As a consequence I still dress mainly in black. Most architects can be forgiven a
