Can an employer specific what colour clothes and footwear you wear to work

[redshoes2017]

I work in an office of 4 women and 1 man. There is no official dress code for the company it's just a given that you wear in smart office attire. We are not a customer faced office we speak with customers by phone only - not sure if that makes a difference to my question........ The general manager has said that smart office wear means dark colours only - blue/black/grey/brown...... footwear has to be black or white only....... is this reasonable to specify the colour of clothing and footwear? Not sure if I'm out of touch as it's been a while since I've worked in an office or this is plain weird , I would be interested to hear what others think .

That seems very odd - you can wear white shoes but not a white dress shirt? It sounds like they are applying the customer-facing rules to everyone, which is ok I guess as long as it's not gendered, but it sounds like the person making the rules doesn't know anything about clothing.

What sex is the GM. Sounds daft to me to expect formal dull clothing.
Lively colours without being overtly aluring would normally be appropriate. Clean, practical and not tatty would be normally fine.

”The CEO and HR said it wasn't fair on the young lads to have the girls prancing about so indecorously”

Good grief. I really hope that was an extremely long time ago. “Not fair on the young lads”?!! The only way that kind of comment could possibly be justified would be if the “young lads” were banned from wearing equivalent clothing, or from “prancing about”, thus making it unfair.

However something tells me that wasn’t the reason...

@BonnieDundee

I worked in an office in the 80s where women couldn't wear trousers except on half-day Friday and never jeans.

I worked in an NHS admin job (not patient facing) where we were supplied with uniform. Women could choose 2 skirts or one skirt and one pair of trousers. You were not allowed to order 2 pairs of trousers. That was in the mid 90s!

I was watching an American TV show from the early 70s the other day (Adam-12) and a new "police woman" had a knee-length uniform dress, medium heels and an elaborate updo hairstyle.

The show prided itself on authenticity so I imagine that at least the dress was regulation for women on the Los Angeles force.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but specifying certain items of clothing as a “uniform” could actually mean a breach of national minimum wage laws

Lots of companies have fallen foul of this, google Wagamama and their black jeans / skirt rule

If it specifies colour or style it classifies as a uniform there you should be compensated reasonably for it.

I worked in the Civil Service, we could wear what we wanted, no dress code, I wore jeans & hoodie or jumpers in winter with either boots or trainers, skirts, shorts, T shirts or vest tops & flip flops or trainers in summer. Even the management dressed down unless they had a customer meeting.

@Trying81

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but specifying certain items of clothing as a “uniform” could actually mean a breach of national minimum wage laws

Lots of companies have fallen foul of this, google Wagamama and their black jeans / skirt rule

Only if staff are on nmw and uniforms aren't provided or refunded

I used to work directly with sex offenders, we had a dress code that was designed to ensure focus was on the work at have and no-one was getting aroused by it, it was fairly obvious in places, no bare shoulders, trousers preferred or long skirts, nothing low cut. It was a therapeutic role so we were encouraged to be informal to differentiate from prison officers, court staff etc so jeans were normal, but we weren't allowed to wear open shoes or sandals (foot fetishes) and a colleague was told her jumper was inappropriate because it had an eighties cartoon character on it and it might invoke thoughts of children. She hadn't thought about it in that way and others wore band TShirts etc so it wasn't a formality issue.

When I worked for my local authority they said don't wear political colours (like blue for labour , purple and red being obvious ones i think red is the colour of Conservatives but unsure don't shoot me) around election time as the local authority is part of local government and it could he seen as favouring one party or the other.
So, I think the answer to your question is yes.

Women police officers in New York City couldn’t wear trousers until 1979. They wore navy Aline skirts with standard blue blouses and navy tunics. It wasn’t very practical.

@bpirockin

I'm probably in the minority here, but having worked as a legal secretary as one of my first jobs, I rather liked the idea of having a similar dress code. It justified having two different wardrobes, and my staple items were good quality and lasted for ages, meaning if I wanted to treat myself for my social wardrobe, the money was there. It also enabled a lot more mix and match/rotation.

I did like working in the suited and booted era.

I liked looking well-dressed for work. But colours weren't prescribed and as long as you looked smart all was ok.

I always struggled with what exactly smart-casual' meant. And I much preferred not to wear at weekends what I'd been wearing all week.