What is casual dress?

Answer 1

There are three distinct forms of "dress" (dressing): formal, dressy, and casual. In the past, these 3 distinct forms were easier to figure out because there were only those three types.

Formal remains basically the same now as in years past. Formal wear are clothes you'd wear to a wedding, a prom, etc.

Dressy clothes used to be the only clothes worn in school or church. School clothes were a little less dressy than "your Sunday best" but in years past, you could just as easily interchange school clothes and church clothes.

"Casual" clothing is what has changed the most in society. In the past, jeans and a T-shirt were never, ever worn to school or church. Schools had "dress down" days (usually once a year in the Spring) when students could wear jeans, T-shirts, etc.

Now, "casual" clothes often depends on the context or situation. If you attend a school where uniforms are worn, casual would likely mean jeans and T-shirts. If your work has you wearing dress trousers and white shirts everyday, a casual day would mean jeans and maybe a dress-down shirt.

Maybe the best way to describe casual is: What you'd wear in public if you were not dressed up, but not so raggedy that you wouldn't be caught dead in it outside your house. So, casual doesn't mean a stained shirt or one that you only wear when you feel sick and want to stay in bed.