Plaid Shorts Fridays

I'm fortunate that every day is casual day for me, so naturally I wear shorts all summer. (I did have a temp job a few years back with a dress code that prohibited shorts, but was otherwise casual.) But I'm careful to dress neatly, so it's clear that I'm dressed for work and not for goofing off: button-front shirts get tucked in, polos are untucked but have reasonably short tails and are not baggy. My shorts are flat-front and to the knee, with a belt, but no cargos in the office--those are strictly for weekends. Shoes are either dark tan boat shoes, khaki canvas sneakers, or white leather Pumas with an oatmeal-colored stripe.

To mix things up a little, I started doing what I've been calling Plaid Shorts Fridays. On most days I wear solid shorts, somewhere on the spectrum from off-white to khaki, which I can wear with either solid or patterned shirts. Plaid shorts look best with a simple, solid-color top like a polo shirt, so I've picked out some combinations that have a little extra pop, or just go together well, like olive, navy, and cream plaid shorts with an ivory polo, or gray plaid shorts with a thin line of blue in them with a royal blue polo. I can probably get through the entire summer without repeating any of these Friday outfits.

It never occurred to me to take any pictures, because I wasn't planning on writing about this until I thought of it while getting dressed this morning. Today's outfit is shorts in a gray and khaki plaid that I got last year at the Gap outlet up in Kittery, with a light khaki polo that I got at Uniqlo in New York three summers ago.