If my http access logs are anything to go by, I get a lot of people coming here looking for information about business casual clothing for women. Tough topic! It’s hard enough to explain business casual at all, but at least men have the benefit of not having fashion change on them quite so fast. Plus, nobody pays as much attention to what men wear. You know it’s true.

So what about women? More to the point, what about women in a geek environment? I’ve worked in dotcoms, ISPs, university computer centres, and IT departments in various fields, and one thing I’ve found is that there’s never an easy answer to “what should I wear?”

Most articles about “business casual” will point out that “business” comes before “casual”, and then go on to recommend some relaxed version of business dress. Easier to do for men than women: the guys can just wear a soft-collared shirt, leave off the tie, and choose chinos (trousers made of cotton drill fabric) instead of the more formal wool or wool blends seen in full business attire. For women, though, the definition of “business” attire is much more flexible, and changes with fashion, so it’s hard to dictate a simple uniform.

As I see it, your choices come down to:

Business casual
This is what the finance and marketing people wear when they think they’re dressing down. They probably shop at nice department stores or wear some of the more affordable designer labels. If they wear jeans, they’ll be fashionably styled ones; more likely, they’ll wear fashionable trousers or skirts in cotton or blended fabrics; their tops will be tailored or styled, and will probably have care instructions saying to hand-wash with care; shoes will be fashionable and might even involve a heel (depending on the season’s fashions); jewelry of some sort will be worn; hair and makeup will be fashion-appropriate: it will have taken them at least 15 minutes to do their hair and face in the morning.

Casual casual
This is what people would wear on weekends, for the most part. Tshirt and jeans, with a sweater if it’s cold; the tshirt may be fitted or might have a collar, but it’ll be easily machine washed. Flat shoes, perhaps boots or “fashion” sneakers or sandals. Minimal makeup and casual hair-styling: a simple pony-tail, for instance.

Geek casual
Geek casual is like “casual casual” but with the addition of trade-show tshirts, messenger-style laptop bags, and trousers with many pockets. Shoes may include Converse All Stars (or the fair trade No Sweat sneakers); baseball caps may be worn; in short, we’re talking about dressing somewhere between the TV-ad “I’m A Mac” guy and an explosion in the ThinkGeek tshirt warehouse. Women dressing in “geek casual” tend to dress more like men than those in any other category.

Subcultural casual
Goth, hippie, skater… this is “what you wear on weekends” if you tend to dress like one of those subcultural groups. All black with doc martens; long skirts and birkenstocks; grazed knees and… OK, I’m showing my age, I have no idea what skaters wear.

So, which one to choose? Perhaps one comes naturally to you, and that will be your immediate preference. But there are a few other things to consider:

Firstly, if you care enough to be reading this article, you probably care enough to follow the fundamental rule of dress codes: stay in the middle of the bell curve. Ideally you should be able to look at what the other women in your workplace are wearing and emulate their style of dress.

Wait, hang on… other women in your office? If you’re a geek there’s a chance there won’t be any, or too few to form a statistically useful sample. In that case, take a look at women in other departments, women you know at other companies, or even the men in your department. Sometimes you’ll need to triangulate: if the only women in your company are in sales, and wear designer jeans, dry-clean-only shirts, and heels, and the men in your group wear geek casual, you might aim for ordinary jeans, fitted Ts, and low-heeled leather shoes of some kind: a reasonable middle ground.

If you know other female geeks in similar jobs, it can’t hurt to take a look at what they wear to work. If you don’t know any, you might find it useful to find some through a technical organisation such as LinuxChix or a professional one for women in technology in your locality. Swapping dress tips isn’t a big part of their remit, so you’ll probably get more benefit from the other activities the group offers, but you can still sneak a peak at what people are wearing and get some ideas.

If you’re a goth or whatever, you might want to see how broad your workplace’s idea of business casual is before rocking up in full whiteface and fishnets. Most tech workplaces are fairly diverse, so you should be able to at least incorporate elements of your preferred dress into what you wear to work. At least in my city (Melbourne, Australia) nobody looks twice at people wearing all black, and I’ve heard there are places where Birkenstocks are pretty much de rigeur.

On that subject, regional variations may be something to take into account. You can automatically assume that companies in San Francisco will dress down, while those on the East Coast of the US or some other financial centres will tend to dress up. If you travel on business, you might want to take that into account.

Whatever option you choose to wear, there are a few basics you need to take care of. These don’t differ much from what I told the guys:

1. Hair. Keep it clean and reasonably well-kempt. Have it short, long, in a ponytail, fashionably styled, whatever — just look as if you paid at least a little attention to it. Dreadlocks and unusual hair dye colours are OK in some workplaces and not in others, but they’re more acceptable for women than for men.

2. Other body hair: geek workplaces are among the most accepting of hairy legs and underarms on women; to be honest, many geek guys would be completely oblivious. However, if you’re going for the upper end of business casual, shaving is part of the look. Alternatively, choose tops that don’t expose your armpits and longer pants or skirts (or wear long socks, tights, or boots).

3. Fragrances: You should attempt to either not smell of anything, or smell faintly of some inoffensive scent. Deodorant’s not essential if the weather’s cool and you’re not sweating, but in summer it’s a good idea. Perfume should be minimal if you wear it at all; there’s nothing worse than those people who fill the elevator or bathroom with their chemical stink.

4. Piercings, including facial piercings or stretched piercings, are increasingly common in the workplace and more common in geek workplaces than elsewhere. Unless you have a face full of metal, you can probably get away with it. Any other jewelry is probably fine; women can get away with a lot.

5. Whatever clothes you wear, make sure they’re in good repair. No holes, no stains, no missing buttons. If you wear leather shoes, don’t let them get scuffed.

6. Skirt length, if you wear them, can be above the knee but not too far above. Shorter skirts with tights are cool, but you still want to be able to crawl under a desk and unplug a network cable without giving your co-workers a free show. (Don’t ask me about my first job doing Novell LAN support. *grimace*)

7. When it comes to shirts/tops/etc, the general rule is to try not to show cleavage, midriff, or too much bare skin anywhere. Most workplaces don’t seem to like strappy tops, but you might be able to get away with it at the height of summer. Remember that any kind of shirt/top/etc immediately becomes more dressy if it costs more or is difficult to clean, so while a cotton tank top might not be acceptable office wear, a silk one might be. It’s insane, but it’s true. Men will express bewilderment at this, but women who care about such things will notice the difference.

One final note: women’s dress in the office is far more political than you might think. How you dress will cause people to make assumptions about your skills, ability, intelligence, affiliations, and just about anything else. Sometimes you’ll need to wear your sudo make me a sandwich tshirt to gain geek cred, while on other days you’ll need to wear the exact opposite to get your point across to the boss or convince marketing that you know what you’re on about.

Whatever you wear, your skills should still speak for themselves. Don’t let the fashion industry drive you nuts. Find something that works for you, then put your energy into your real work.