Smart casual’s comfier cousin lets you glide seamlessly from a long plane journey and into a work meeting
Forget smart casual. These days it’s smart comfy that I want. Smart casual was about making smart clothes look more relaxed; smart comfy is about making them feel more relaxed.
Smart comfy might not sound all that different to smart casual, but it is nothing short of a whole new perspective on getting dressed. Smart casual was about how to look smart, without looking stuffy. It was about how you looked to other people, more than how you felt in yourself. The goal was to appear chill, not to feel chill.
Smart comfy starts from the opposite direction. It is about clothes that look polished, but don’t have any hard edges. The gateway drug that got me hooked, and that I can see on the street is doing the same for others, is a pair of travel trousers. If you don’t get the point of smart comfy yet, then I suspect you will when you get your first pair.
Do you have them already? Travel trousers present as semi-formal trousers. They have the silhouette and detailing of trousers you might wear to the office with a shirt. The waistband doesn’t look elasticated (although it might be, more of which later) but instead has a button fastening, or belt loops, or both. They are not tight like leggings, but neither are they just shapeless, like tracksuit trousers. They drape. The fabric, too, is important. Not the traditional smart kind that demands you stay pert and upright to avoid the creases and bags that come with sitting down, but also nothing fluffy or fleecy or pyjama-adjacent. The new generation of technical fabrics can pass for silk or wool blend, but have the zero-crease factor of Lycra.
