When did casual clothes become acceptable at corporate jobs?

With the variety of jobs available in the 21st century, it’s not surprising that some jobs are less strict with their workplace dress code. For example, as a ghostwriter, I can be in my pajamas all day and be as productive as I would be in my most professional outfit (probably more so because I dislike wearing skirts on a daily basis).

However, this is often a tricky question. How do you balance professionalism and casual dress? For men, this is harder because they literally have tee-shirts and dress shirts and jeans and shorts and dress pants, and no inbetween. For women, there are a lot of items that have cross over between casual wear and being professional items; an example could be a blouse paired with jeans is appropriate for a date, but that same skirt with a pencil skirt could be considered professional.

This is rather a minefield for dress code does differ company to company. However, before the turn of the 21st century, the requirement and expectation that formal attire was necessary for work had become outdated. A more casual, no tie, and sometimes no jacket, became acceptable and perhaps the IT industry was the first to value what people produced above what they wore and how they appeared.

Women have profited from the more casual approach because they enjoy individuality more than men, some of whom find it more worrying to be casual because they have to think what to wear rather than put on the 'work suit' automatically.