Inhabitants of the corporate world are often sandwiched between comfortability and acceptability where fashion is concerned. This is because many people now peg feeling comfortable in whatever they choose to wear at the genesis of their fashion Bible. If you feel comfortable in it, wear it. But there are so many wears we feel comfortable in (it’s a fashion permissive world) that are a huge NO-NO for the corporate world. Another thing is: most offices have their dress codes. So your rule number one should always be, abide by the dress code of your corporate environment and you will never go wrong. It has often been said that it is safe to be a Roman when you are in Rome.
Yet there is a way you can bring about a creative blend of materials so that you easily switch between corporate and casual worlds of fashion. The corporate world was never as colourful as it is now. I guess people got tired of routine dressing, just mechanically repeating the same style of dressing throughout the corporate weeks and years. The biggest culprit of the recent daunting creativity of the modern corporate world cannot but be traced to the entertainment industry where people paint their hair and wear their articulated fashion accessories the other way round.
To start with, going for an interview used to be a rigid affair when you had to just pick anything brutally formal from your wardrobe, wear it without even thinking. These days, an interviewer would even tell you, “You look too formal.” And you look at the team of interviewers wearing crazy wigs, tinted hair, ripped jeans, and you wonder, “Are you kidding me?” So, modern interviewees are catching in on this and wearing mad things to interviews.
We are all on the bandwagon of being stylish, looking different, arresting eyes and being commended for our appearances. Good comments on our looks make us feel confident and happy. Who doesn’t want that? Modern fashionistas have found their way around the rigidity of the corporate world and the flexibility of the entertainment/casual world. That way, they switch fluidly between the two worlds. People now combine professionalism and casualness in dressing. When you see Toke Makinwa on unbuttoned black suit, white camisole top, blue ripped jeans and black and white canvas, you will see how she can easily transform from a business mogul to an entertainment guru. In that outfit, she can successfully sell you a business idea while entertaining you. As a man, there are ways you can deck your Ankara so that you can switch roles between being a boss at the office and a traditional family man at home or traditional event. It saves you the headache of having to change clothes when you are leaving the office later in the day for a friend’s traditional engagement ceremony or burial etc. You can have a casual top over a pair of jeans with tennis. You can throw a jacket over your top to dim the tone of the casualness. Later in the day when everyone is tired at the office and getting ready for after work night out, just throw away the jacket and you are party ready.
Women’s clothing gives larger room for the expression of creativity, as fashion designers now easily create fashion wonders from local fabrics and foreign materials. These mad creations are making hardcore formal companies in the corporate world edit their traditional fashion ideologies of office wears. There is hardly any foreign design that cannot be localized with home-made fabrics. Gone are the days when companies never wanted you to wear Ankara/traditional stuffs to the office. And the days are fast approaching when you will no longer be able to tell which wears are casual or formal because they will be acceptable across both worlds. We are creatures of habits and we are on the way to wearing ourselves to fashion freedom.
