Has casual Friday gone too far? Absolutely, according to a newly formed association of menswear retailers, who kicked off a campaign on Sept. 28 to promote “Dress Up Thursdays” at big and small businesses.

“When my firm went casual on Friday, you couldn’t find a staff person around after 1 p.m.,” said Vincent Rua, an accountant and entrepreneur who owns three Christopher’s men’s clothing stores in New York state.

Rua, spokesman for the Tailored Men’s Clothing Association, said the fashion industry responded so positively to the group’s Dress Up Thursday concept that the retailers decided to promote it to the public and business community.

San Francisco-based Levi Strauss, which launched its casual dress campaign in 1992, is given credit for dramatically changing the way Americans dress for work. But some observers contend that casual dress, especially at small companies, has gone too far.

“Levi Strauss never intended to promote sloppy casual dress with people wearing blue jeans with holes and sandals to work,” Rua said.

Although it feels like casual Friday has been around forever, it began eight years ago when the marketing folks at Levi Strauss created a campaign to promote sales of casual clothing. Levi sent a “Guide to Casual Business Wear” to 30,000 human resources managers. Since then, the company that makes Dockers casual clothes has aggressively promoted casual dress at work through videos, fashion shows, brochures and media campaigns.

“Now, 80 percent of all companies offer some form of business casual dress policy,” said Amy Gemellaro, spokeswoman for Levi’s Dockers and Slates clothing lines. “People want options; they want to dress how they feel. Nobody wants a mandate.”

To encourage casual dress in the workplace, Gemellaro said the “Dockers Style at Work” fall campaign is scheduled to visit 10 cities. Gemellaro said the mobile fashion show, featuring stylists from Vogue and In Style magazines, was planned long before the company learned about the creation of Dress Up Thursdays.

“There’s nothing bad about Dress Up Thursdays,” said Gemellaro. She said casual dress has become such an accepted practice in the American workplace that it is in little danger of being eliminated. “People are coming out of graduate school and evaluating companies based on their dress code.”

Style do’s and don’ts

However, image consultants interviewed for this column appear to be promoting a return to looking sharp at the office.

“The way we dress affects the way we think, feel and act, and the way others respond to us,” said Judith Rasband, founder of the Conselle Institute of Image Management in Provo, Utah. “No matter whether they work at a large, small or home-based business, people do not work as hard when they are wearing relaxed clothes.”

To help baffled employers deal with creating a workable dress code, Rasband has created a trademarked “Style Scale,” which identifies four levels of dress: tailored, softly tailored, casually tailored and non-tailored.

“There’s a place on the scale for every personal or professional style, including casual dress in the workplace,” said Rasband, who is working with Vincent Rua’s group on the campaign to promote Dress Up Thursdays. (For more style tips, visit her Web site: www.conselle.com).

She said managers and decision-makers should wear tailored clothing with straight lines, firm fabrics, small-scale geometric patterns and dark colors.

If you aren’t a decision-maker, it’s OK to wear clothes with rounded shapes, soft fabrics and loose-fitting, collarless styles.

Rasband predicts many companies embracing Dress Up Thursdays will encourage employees to wear softly tailored and casually tailored clothing that feature a mix of design elements. “There are times when you should wear a suit or a sports coat, but at no time should you be dressed like you would on a weekend,” she advised.

Recently, when I arrived for a meeting with a top executive at a major Massachusetts-based corporation, everyone I met was dressed in blue jeans and company polo shirts. I felt completely overdressed in my royal blue coat dress, until the vice president I was meeting with explained that they were moving into new cubicles that day, and employees were urged to dress more casually than usual. (His boss, by the way, was not wearing blue jeans).

“There’s a lot of confusion about casual dress codes, with people showing up for work in outfits they should walk their dogs in,” says Sherry Maysonave, author of “Casual Power: How to Power Up Your Nonverbal Communication & Dress Down for Success.”

In a recent interview with the London Financial Times, Maysonave said CEOs who dress too casually send the wrong message.

“Executives must not sacrifice their credibility and personal power by wearing clothes that are too relaxed to command respect,” she said.

Tips for dressing up

If you have been waiting for a reason to establish a new dress code for your sloppily dressed employees, here are some practical tips:

– Visit www.1dressup.com for more information on the Dress Up Thursdays campaign.

– If it makes sense, ask employees to start dressing up at least one day a week.

– Decide exactly what kind of clothes you want your staff to wear from now on.

– Set a good example. If you dress like a slob, why should they dress up?

– Be aware of what is customary dress for your industry. If you are in the fashion business, you probably know what’s in style this season.

Reporting by Sarah Prior. Jane Applegate is the author of “201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business,” and is founder of ApplegateWay.com, a multimedia Web site for busy entrepreneurs. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].