The big news in business this week is the move by Wall Street stalwart Goldman Sachs relaxing its dress code for the 36,000 -plus employees to a more business casual dress code, shifting away from the tailored-suit “white shoe” firm that it has been for over a hundred years. While this move was made ostensibly to adapt to the shifting demographic of the GS workforce (in other words, they know that younger generations prefer to wear more casual gear over the Gordon Gekko-esque suits that have become the standard of the Financial District,) they , and we, would like to make clear for the 354,763rd time that “business casual” doesn’t mean “Polo shirt and Khakis,” nor does it ever mean to dress like a bloody slob just because you’re not wearing suit. If there’s one thing that burns us up more than anything is how the interpretation by so many people (men) has been taken as a cue to dress like schlubs to work.

While some see this as perhaps a sea change in the culture of High Finance and yet another example of the lazification of America (yes…we just invented that word,) we see it as an ENORMOUS opportunity. Not to start dressing like Jeff Lebowski to work, but to re-write (or perhaps reinforce) the rules of that ever-elusive notion of “business casual” that really has no solid definition and has therefore led most people to accentuate the “casual” and ignore the “business” portion of the term. And there you have, essentially, our entire manifesto for existing and yet another opportunity for us to define what is and what isn’t “business casual.”

It is not:

…jeans and a t-shirt – Unless the jeans are dark, tailored, and non-cargo, and the shirt is solid, also well-fitted, and underneath a jacket or blazer. Period. Paragraph.

– Unless the jeans are dark, tailored, and non-cargo, and the shirt is solid, also well-fitted, and underneath a jacket or blazer. Period. Paragraph. …sweatpants and tennis shoes – Unless, again, they are well-fitted, dark, professional-grade sweatpants (which are now a thing) and a pair of trainers that you never wear to the gym and are nice enough to almost pass as dress shoes.

– Unless, again, they are well-fitted, dark, professional-grade sweatpants (which are now a thing) and a pair of trainers that you never wear to the gym and are nice enough to almost pass as dress shoes. …a cue to forget the mantra of “act as if ” – You should still (and always) dress as if the CEO of the company could show up to your office at any time, because one day, they will. And you don’t want to be the guy wearing ripped jeans and a Hard Rock Cafe – Dublin shirt.

So, what is business casual? The term is as indefinable and elusive as James Harden with a basketball, and open to as many interpretations as their are people on Earth. If you ask twenty different people to definite what business casual means to them, you’ll inevitably get twenty-three answers. None of them are wrong, necessarily, but to continually leave something that is assumed to be self-explanatory open to such a wide and individualized interpretation is why “business casual” (and dress code standards in general) have fallen down the slippery slope of slobbiness in this country over the past thirty years. Having no standards has led to the aforementioned Lebowskification of office wear.

The moral of the story is that, while we think this move by Goldman is a good move in the long run, we don’t want this to be the green light that professional men see as a sign to start dressing like frat bros, especially since we know the halls of Goldman Sachs and countless other firms like them are full of former frat bros just itching to revert back to their beer-bonging, pledge-spanking, legacy-admitted selves any chance they get. We also don’t want men at large to have yet another reason to not dress with any semblance of how a man should dress. This is an opportunity to re-evaluate business dress, not a sign to turn our offices into the business equivalent of The Road Warrior. As a further service to the men of the world, we have this article that features over a dozen outfits you can steal that are suitable to wear to work that will garner you some respect as well as some style cred. You can also go here for DAILY style tips, advice, and outfit inspiration so that, before you know it, you’ll be taken a hell of a lot more seriously,