Do you have a job that requires you to be at a physical location? How analog of you. But that means you’re going to need to dress yourself presentably, appropriately, and somewhat stylishly. Analog is back, baby.
There is one slight issue. Work clothes for men can be as drab, lackluster, and soulless as the labor market itself. That means there’s a risk of rocking up to work each day in a tedious and bland uniform of the bland. We want to shuffle up the deck so that you are presenting your best professional self without ruffling the feathers of Le Grand Fromage. The best work clothes for men bring that little bit of joy into the workplace.
In this piece, we’ll consider material, brand reputation, affordability, and style in more detail. But first, we’ll just drop three features of clothes that are worth searching out:
- Look for machine washable items as this will save you time and money.
- Stretch fabrics will bring comfort and moisture-wicking for odor resistance and comfort.
- Non-iron shirts (as I’ve recently discovered) are a genius invention, keeping you away from your ironing board and giving you an extra 5–10 minutes in bed.
In terms of your philosophical approach, there are two extreme approaches. The first is called “Steve Jobs”, meaning that you just construct one singular outfit that you wear every day. This way, you’ll save time, money, and decision fatigue.
The second approach is to bring creativity and happenchance to your outfit construction each morning. Being a fashion journalist, I believe that exercising creativity through clothing will energize creativity in the professional realm. There’s no right answer here, and it’s a spectrum, but just know that even Jobs ensured that he wore high-quality clothing. Always try to purchase quality clothing where you can.
So, without further delay, these are the best work clothes for men. Read on below.
Key Takeaways
For this mission I went through my assortment of work clothes for men. Then, I went online. I gathered a few of the top recommendations from r/malefashionadvice. I found these recommendations on the websites of the reputable brands mentioned. Finally, customer reviews steered this journalistic ship through the choppy waters of online shopping.
Overall, the best work clothes for men came from the respected online Dutch brand Hockerty. This brand offers a range of tailored work clothes for men at a reasonable price. Here, we suggest that a pair of customized leather sneakers will work as a good casual option for the office and take you through the process.
Runner-up is the Todd Snyder khaki sport coat. This jacket is elegant, sophisticated, quality, and simple. It’s important with your professional clothing not to overdo it in terms of expression, but equally, not to dress plain, either. This piece hits the balance just right.
Why it’s great: The brilliance of Hockerty lies in its online customization tool. The brand offers customization across dress shirts, shoes, and trousers, AKA the full office-wear spectrum. Here, I want to focus on luxury leather sneakers. There are seven styles within which you can tweak the color of each panel.
Finally, you can also choose the tone of the midsole and add your initials. This means that you get the perfect design and the perfect size, and no material is wasted. The process is simple, and the end product is brilliant. It doesn’t get much better than this, folks.
Who is this for? It feels sacrilege, just to mention one style of shoe from Hockerty, but the leather sneakers are fantastic because they offer a chic, smart-casual tool to be deployed throughout men’s workwear wardrobes. Equal parts elegant, sophisticated, and easy on the eye. Plus, they’re easily styled with a blazer, chinos, and a shirt for office appropriateness.
A smart leather sneaker can also be deployed throughout smart-casual weekend outfits, so you get
Flaws but not deal-breakers: They aren’t as formal as a pair of dress shoes, oxfords, or derbies. So, depending on your work dress code, sneakers might not work.
Why it’s great: Don’t just wear a shirt, but instead make your shirts work for you. Employ them to stylish effect. We’ve streamlined the hiring process by leading you right to the star candidate in men’s workwear: a Dockers shirt.
This robust button-down gives a masculine edge to your office casual attire and much-needed durability if you’re working outside. The two buttoned front pockets give a relaxed feel to the shirt, as do the chambray, flannel, and khaki twill fabric choices.
Who is this for? This shirt is for those whose workplace dress code leans casual. Or, if you need a robust, insulating shirt for yard work, factory work, or manual labour. The joy of this shirt also resides in its simplicity of styling. Easily paired with jeans (of multiple color tones), chinos, pleated pants and even shorts for the summer months.
Flaws but not deal-breakers: It’s no dress shirt. Beware of its casual nature. Ooo, spooky!
Why it’s great: Work clothes for men might also need to cater to physical work. You know, real work. If this is you, then it requires your threads to be up to it. Carharrt is a brand that’s been up to the challenge for decades and is respected in a practical sense and also gets approving nods from Fashionheads.
These rugged double-fronted cotton pants have a smidge of Spandex for stretch and comfort throughout the day. Plus, an array of useful pockets for various… I dunno, pencils? Plasters? Moisturizer? (HMU if you work outside for what people use pockets for.)
Who is this for? These pants are for the serious hard workers who need their trousers to work just as hard for them. The double-front knee protection gives extra durability in areas that would erode most quickly during labor, but there’s also stretch and, therefore, the comfort to match.
Flaws but not deal-breakers: I recommend shaving that handlebar mustache, putting down that DIPA, and not wearing Carharrt work pants to the office.
Why it’s great: Chinos, every day. Thanks to these intelligent Bonobos chinos, the 8% Spandex means that you will barely remember you are wearing them. It’ll have such a low sensory impact.
I find that I need looser fitting or stretch pants if I’m going to be slotting my pins under a desk all day long. The stretch puts less strain on the groin throughout the day, helps with fabric bunching, and won’t pinch your skin when you sit down. These Bonobos pants make the “joy” of sitting in an office chair that bit more bearable. And we salute that.
Who is this for? This men’s workwear is for the decadent office worker bee. It’s worth mentioning that the eclectic range of tones means that if these work for you, then you can construct interesting outfits on the daily by varying your tone of chino. (Good luck styling the Purple Velvet Pantone, though). Avoid styling with a polo shirt, as that shows a lack of thought, expression, and personality.
Flaws but not deal-breakers: The slim leg might not suit every man’s leg size or personal style.
Why it’s great: Someone on Reddit wrote, “I feel like you can’t go wrong with TS,” and their voice deserves to be championed because it’s bloody correct. The designer has replaced Ralph Lauren as the bastion of New Americana, and this jacket is supreme evidence of this. This suave sport coat puts elegance and breathability at the top of the men’s workwear menu thanks to its combination of loose weave Italian linen and a lack of lining or padding. It’s a delight for the warmth of summertime.
Who is this for? A light blazer is the deftest ways to make any outfit “office-coded.” Slip over jeans, chinos, pleated pants, plus a T-shirt, turtleneck, or shirt and you’ll be making deals in no time.
Flaws but not deal-breakers: If one were being cynical (and when isn’t one being cynical?), then you could level the charge that it is just a conventional blazer. However, its depth lies in its details. The intricate Piedmont milled linen, the “barchetta” (“little boat”) breast pocket, and the double-vents make this a distinguished piece of work clothes for men.
Why it’s great: A minimalist shacket brings a cool, crisp refinement to the party. I mean, office(-party). But what sets this Uniqlo garment apart is its use of intelligent materials. AirSense is lightweight, quick-washing, and sweat-wicking. Plus, the jacket has been designed in a way to reduce stitching and further imbue a futurist men’s workwear aesthetic.
If you think that this is the future of the work suit, then try with the matching pants and shorts. (Yes, shorts… in the office… I’ll just wait for your office-attire-paradigm to un-shatter itself).
Who is this for? If you have the freedom to swap a blazer for a shacket, then Uniqlo might push you to make that switch. Sometimes, a blazer feels a little bit gouche, old-school, or generic, whereas a shacket, or chore jacket can feel more modern, relaxed, and confident.
Flaws but not deal-breakers: Perhaps a spring/summer choice owing to the light fabric.
Buying Considerations for the Best Work Clothes for Men
Material
Look out for Spandex. Though not the world’s most ecologically beneficial material, it is great for work clothing as it adds stretch and, therefore, comfort to clothing. When you’re wearing work clothes every day, this is a real benefit. Elsewhere, look out for sweat-wicking properties to help fight odors and also check to see if the material is machine washable, as this can save time and stress in the future.
Style
Always accommodate your style to what your work dress code is (unless you’re trying to get fired, then we recommend going for a sequined mankini). Within the framework, you’ll want to offer some stamp of individuality to help keep you engaged and excited about your men’s workwear.
It doesn’t always have to be chinos, a shirt, smart sneakers, blazer combination. Branch out with long-sleeved T-shirts, roll-neck knits, chic sweaters, grandad collar shirts, short-sleeved shirts, chore jackets, car coats, pleated trousers, corduroys, and on. Use your imagination and what’s in your wardrobe to construct innovative looks.
Fit
If you want to stick to natural fabrics and avoid adopting Spandex, then you can opt for roomier fits to give breathability, movement, and comfort to your outfits. This also works well within current baggier trends seen outside the office.
It’s a delicate balance, though. Don’t veer too skinny, as that generally looks bad and might expose body parts in a way that your colleagues might not appreciate. Equally, men’s workwear that is too baggy just looks like you’ve rocked up to the first day of school in an outfit that your parents claim “you’ll grow into.” AKA, a nervous schoolboy. I suggest trying to achieve a natural or slightly oversized fit.
How We Chose
Dressing for work in the modern day is simpler than it used to be. There’s more freedom to wear what you want, and dress codes have been relaxed. The products I’ve chosen in this list reflect this loosening of formality, but that doesn’t mean that the items should afford to relax on quality, elegance, panache, integrity, and value for money.
Also, within the now wider scope of “work clothes,” I sought pieces from a range of price brackets and formality requirements. These are some of the methods I used to narrow my longlist to a shortlist.
Customer Reviews: A lot of brands these days now post customer reviews on their websites to prove their legitimacy. The Uniqlo offering and Todd Snyder products have 5 stars out of 5 on their websites, one from 30 reviews and the other from 3 reviews.
With so few reviews, it’s hard to give a robust recommendation. Plus, the 5-star nature raises suspicions that these reviews have been cherry-picked. Hockerty links its multi-star rating to Trustpilot with more than 16,000 reviews, an independently reputable reviewing system. Plus, the Amazon choices from Dockers and Bonobos are using the relatively robust Amazon review system to gain their reputations.
Brand Reputation: So, why pick Uniqlo and Todd Snyder, if you can’t tell whether they have cherry-picked reviews? Simple. Their brand reputations outshine any fears. These are not suspicious institutions. The stellar brand reputations of Dockers and Bonobos forced me to pick these brands out of the choices from Amazon, too.
Online Reputation: This refers to reputations on the gossipy forums, blogs and Substacks of the Internet. Uniqlo, Todd Snyder, Bonobos and Dockers all score highly within the hallowed walls of US Reddit, particularly when the search was refined for “work clothes.”
Overall Rep: When customer reviews, brand reputation, and online clout all align, you have yourself a solid product recommendation.
Why Trust Us?
Why should you trust a guy who’s spent perhaps 96–98% of his time working from home to recommend what you should wear to the office? Well, because that guy happens to have written about the clothes that people wear in offices far more regularly during the past seven years than maybe he’d have hoped for. That guy is Harvey James, an esteemed menswear writer now plying his trade for FashionBeans.
For FB, Harvey has written extensively about office-adjacent men’s clothing categories, including travel blazers, tie brands, and summer shirts. Harvey’s dedication to quality and detail makes him a reliable source for style advice, helping you make informed decisions about your wardrobe.
Final Verdict
The best work clothes for men tend to be sleek, understated and of premium quality. That’s why I have no qualms in labelling Hockerty as a brand producing the best work clothes for men. The whole range of shirts, trousers, jackets, blazers, suits, dress shoes and sneakers are entirely customizable and can be fitted to your size exactly. It’s a technological miracle.
FAQ
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Generally, the best men’s workwear is chic, durable and practical. Let’s work through those three descriptors in turn. Firstly, to be chic. You must be presentable and you must dress in line with company policy. But also, don’t dress in anything too quotidian or generic. These are difficult balances to strike, but they can often be achieved by changing just one piece of clothing. Secondly, to be durable. Due to the amount of times you’ll be wearing these garments, durability is key to your investment. That’s why we recommend dependable and reputable brands only. Lastly, practicality. You don’t want to be up at the crack of dawn collecting your suits, shirts, and jackets from the dry cleaners every week. Try to choose pieces that don’t need much washing and ironing.
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It depends on the dress code, doesn’t it? So, instead of dissecting the minutiae of dress codes, let’s focus on the foundations. Firstly, I think you can’t go wrong with a good watch. A nice 36mm is good for a daily choice since it won’t get in the way if you have to do more practical things, and its size won’t distract. Secondly, a premium belt. Thirdly, a good jacket or coat. If you need reminding of the power of a strong coat, look at the difference between one person wearing a full tracksuit and another person wearing a full tracksuit along with a smart structured long coat. A coat is transformational. And a jacket is, too, just to a lesser extent. Lastly, footwear. Don’t skimp on the footwear. Even if you’re opting for the casual route, make sure the product is of high quality, durable, presentable, and chic. An investment in a good, comfortable pair of work shoes is never a bad idea.
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