On her first day as a financial-analysis intern at Intel in January, Kimberley Capp wore a suit and drew stares.
"I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb," said Capp, a finance senior.
From then on, Capp primarily wore jeans and T-shirts to work, as did many of her co-workers. She also wears flip-flops - technically a violation of Intel's dress code - but she's never been punished for it.
While some companies, particularly in the high-technology sector, have lenient dress codes, a backlash against overly relaxed employee clothing choices in the last three years has made business casual more standard, said Angelo Kinicki, an ASU management professor.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August that 84 percent of companies with 2,000 employees or more have a business-casual dress code, up from 79 percent in 2004.
These codes aim to make workers comfortable while preventing them from going too far, Kinicki said.
"For men, that would be nice, casual pants like Dockers," Kinicki said. "For women, it would be no halter tops. It's not going back to suits and ties on a regular basis."
Capp said as an intern, she tries to dress better in certain cases than her co-workers. For example, she'll wear a blouse during presentations to make a better impression.
"I don't want to be portrayed as even more young," she said.
Students working in offices should dress as well as other employees to create a good impression, said Marianne Jennings, an ASU professor of legal and ethical studies.
"When a student is working for a Fortune 100 company and the people there are dressed business professional and they don't, that's a strike against [them]," Jennings said.
Political science and history senior Josh Curcio, who works as a bill collector at JPMorgan Chase in Tempe, said workers there are allowed to wear business-casual clothing, but some "get away with murder."
"Women are not supposed to wear tank tops, but girls will come in with tank tops and things that are obviously not conducive to a good working environment," he said.
Curcio usually wears a button-down shirt and slacks during the week and jeans and a T-shirt when he works on weekends.
He said he tends to dress up more than his co-workers.
"People will look at you and say, 'Hey, that guy is sharply dressed,'" Curcio said. "They tend to treat you with more respect."
Encouraging employees to dress well is done to convey a professional image to each other and to outsiders, Kinicki said.
Companies also hope this image transfers to employees' work ethic, he said.
Jessie Toles, a test materials engineer for Honeywell International in Phoenix, usually wears a polo shirt and jeans to work, where the dress code is relaxed.
But Toles, an aerospace engineering sophomore, said he sometimes wants to dress more formally, as he did sometimes when working at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.
"When I'm dressed up, I feel like there's more to be done," Toles said.
But journalism senior Jacque Wing said she likes the lenient dress code at her public relations internship.
During the summer, Wing, who interns with BJ Communications in central Phoenix, said she could wear capri pants and city shorts - knee-length shorts similar to slacks.
As the weather cools down, she has started wearing slacks and skirts, she said.
"I would like the opportunity to dress up. I think that's really fun," Wing said. "[But] it's also nice to not have to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe."
Reach the reporter at Grayson.Steinberg@asu.edu.
