Adventures in Adulting: Dressing Business Professional/Casual

Why is fancy clothing always way too long? Do women get taller as they get richer? Cause if so, mama's gotta make that paper. #ShortyMcgee

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) July 3, 2013

The more adult I become the more I see the daunting words... dress business professional/casual.

Men have it so easy. There isn't much difference for them between business professional and casual, and they can get away with only owning five shirts and two suits and still look hella professional . But as a woman it just isn't that easy.

There's a lot of gray area for me between dressing business professional and business casual. On top of that, it's pretty hard to dress professional while being fashion-forward. For some reason fashion and business don't commonly mix, and I just end up feeling boring in my pants suit. I can't possibly be the only woman out there struggling on what to wear to look professional and cute. I'm all for adulting, but I don't believe in giving up dressing stylish for it.

I've recently started shopping at the Banana Republic Factory Store off the Oconee Connector in Athens. I think their target audience is definitely young professionals/college students because their factory prices are much more affordable. I believe the best way to target their audience would be through their struggle to learn to adult. Specifically, their struggle with what to wear in the adult world. I picked up a few things for my interview next week:

I would love it if BR would tweet out cute business professional/casual outfits using their current clothes in store. They could also tweet outfit ideas for interviews, how to know if a suit fits you properly, dressing business professional/casual during different seasons, best business professional/casual styles for certain body types, the difference between business professional and business casual, dos and don'ts, etc. This would make for a great way to incorporate their clothes and in-store sales in a way that would interest those new to the world of adulting. Here's some examples of what it could look like:

Also, I think the company should have #AskBR where people can tweet out their interview outfits to ask BR if it is appropriate. BR can respond to these with advice and can suggest their merchandise if (and only if) the person were to need it.

Then, BR should compile all of these tips on a Pinterest board and have the pins link back to the BR Factory website. For pins that include outfits created with BR Factory clothes, they should include links to the specific clothing pieces in the description. (side note: one frustrating thing about Pinterest is when there's no link to buy something you really like) Each Pinterest board could be a different category, and they can create a Lookbook with this different boards.