Blue Jeans Are a Complete No-No: Dress Codes in Vietnam and Australia
Priya MehtaOctober 7, 2026 6 min read
🇻🇳 Vietnam · 🇦🇺 Australia
*By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
A Vietnamese city official once justified a government-wide jeans ban with the explanation that denim "just doesn't feel right" on a civil servant. An Australian recruiter, describing the same decade's dress-code trends, said he can go weeks without a single candidate ever mentioning dress code as a reason for leaving a job. Between these two data points sits the entire spectrum of how seriously a country can take what you wear to the office.
Do's & Don'ts
🇻🇳 Vietnam
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Default to tucked-in shirts and trousers for men, and conservative skirts/dresses or áo dài for women, in government-adjacent or formal office settings | Wear jeans or T-shirts to a public-sector or client-facing role; several cities have formalised this into actual policy |
| Check your specific city or employer's code of conduct directly — rules genuinely vary between Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and smaller cities | Assume a rule you heard about in one city applies nationwide; officials have been publicly fact-checked for overstating this |
| Err toward conservative, modest dress generally, especially earlier in a role | Wear sleeveless tops or above-knee hemlines in more traditional or government-linked workplaces |
| Expect dress-code rules to sometimes extend further than clothing — some codes also address makeup, fragrance, and even tattoos | Assume pushback on an "invasive" rule will change it quickly; several widely criticised codes have stayed in force regardless |
| Observe what senior local colleagues actually wear day to day as your most reliable, practical guide | Over-invest in strict Western business formalwear if your specific office and sector lean more relaxed |
🇦🇺 Australia
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Ask directly what "smart casual" means at your specific employer — it's the single most common standard but varies by workplace | Assume the whole country has gone fully casual; formal business attire still dominates specific sectors like law (3.6% casual-dress mentions) and banking |
| Dress up for interviews regardless of the day-to-day dress code — 65% of workers still say first impressions matter here | Assume relaxed daily dress code means an interview outfit doesn't matter |
| Expect dress norms to vary meaningfully by region — the ACT leads at under 1% of job postings mentioning casual dress, still a minority practice overall | Assume "casual Fridays" culture is universal just because remote-friendly tech and insurance roles have embraced it |
| Treat a uniform requirement as the most common formal standard in many workplaces (26% of surveyed workers) | Assume a casual dress code signals lower professional standards; it's increasingly framed as a sign of employer trust, not laxity |
| Use your judgement on industry norms — media sales and client-facing finance still reward a "smart" look that signals trustworthiness | Assume what you wear is a major factor in why people leave jobs; recruiters report it's rarely cited as a real reason |
Vietnam
Vietnam's dress-code story is less a settled national culture than a patchwork of individual, sometimes contested, local rules — and the most instructive case is Can Tho, a city that in 2017 issued a code of conduct explicitly banning jeans and T-shirts for public servants, requiring tucked-in shirts and trousers for men and áo dài or office skirts for women. The justification offered by the city's own Department for Internal Affairs director was refreshingly blunt: government employees "look strange in jeans at work," and blue jeans are "a complete no-no." When journalists checked his claim that Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City already had identical rules, they found it was false — Hanoi's own code only discourages sleeveless tops and short skirts, and Ho Chi Minh City had no formal dress code at all at the time.
The pattern repeats with real consequences for how invasive these rules can get: Hanoi's separate 2017 code of conduct extended well past clothing into earphones, fragrance, makeup, and tattoos, and was publicly criticised as "too invasive" even as it stayed in force. Public-sector workers affected by these rules have called them "rigid," but pushback hasn't reliably changed the policies. Hofstede's research scores Vietnam at just 20 on individualism, among the more collectivist readings globally, which helps explain why dress is treated as a matter of collective institutional image rather than individual choice — the office, not the individual employee, is what a strict dress code is understood to be protecting.
Australia
Australia's dress code has been loosening for years, and the data confirms it's a real, measurable trend rather than a vibe. Job postings mentioning relaxed dress standards are up significantly since the pandemic, with casual-dress language appearing 3.2 times more often in high-remote-work occupations than in roles that stay mostly in-office — insurance leads all sectors at 11.6% of postings referencing casual dress, while legal (3.6%) and banking (1.8%) hold onto more formal norms. A SEEK survey of 4,800 Australian workers found uniforms still the single most common standard (26%), followed closely by smart casual (25%, and the option most workers call "ideal"), with pure formal business attire the least common at just 11%.
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What's notable is how little this actually seems to matter to retention. Recruiter Mark Hall-Smith, interviewed by Seek's own hiring-advice team, observed that while dress code shapes some workplace decisions, he "rarely hear[s] anyone mention it when I specifically ask why they are leaving a company." Separate research from Westpac and Randstad found a third of workers would forfeit US$5,000 for the right to dress informally, and the same proportion say they'd decline or quit a job over a strict dress requirement — yet 65% still believe dressing up specifically for an interview matters, suggesting the relaxation is about daily norms, not about the moments a worker is actively being judged. Hofstede's Australia score of 90 on individualism, one of the highest recorded, tracks with a system that increasingly treats dress as a matter of personal judgment the employer should simply trust, rather than a rule to enforce.
The Reckoning
The sharpest contrast here isn't formality versus casualness — it's who gets to decide. In Vietnam, dress code is frequently handed down by name, by city, sometimes by an official quoted directly in the newspaper justifying a specific ban on a specific fabric. In Australia, dress code is increasingly something an employer signals trust by not specifying at all, leaving "smart casual" to be interpreted individually, office by office, employee by employee.
That makes the two countries' dress-code "mistakes" nearly opposite in kind. In Vietnam, the risk is dressing too casually for a context where the rule is real, specific, and occasionally enforced by an actual named official. In Australia, the risk is dressing too formally and signalling, unintentionally, that you don't yet understand how much trust the relaxed dress code is supposed to convey.
The Part the Brochure Left Out
Tuoi Tre News — Jake Mallalieu, a British expat, offered a surprisingly supportive take on Ho Chi Minh City's proposed civil-servant code of conduct, calling it "very reasonable" and comparing it to the strict professional standards expected of UK police officers representing a public institution.
Tuoi Tre News — John Lim, a Singaporean expat, went further, arguing "it should be done" and pointing to Singapore's own long-standing civil-service conduct rules as evidence that dress and behaviour standards can coexist with — and even reinforce — public trust in government competence.
Saigoneer — Reporting on Hanoi's 2017 code of conduct captured the practical frustration from the other side: a rule that extended into earphones, fragrance, makeup, and tattoos was publicly branded "too invasive" by critics, even though the code remained in force regardless of the pushback.
Seek Hiring Advice (Mark Hall-Smith) — The recruiter's most useful piece of advice doubles as a pleasant surprise for anyone bracing for a strict Australian office: dress code "really boils down to" the specific industry and client expectations rather than a fixed national standard — media sales and finance still reward looking "smart," while most other sectors have genuinely relaxed.
Conclusion
If you're deciding how much to invest in your work wardrobe before a move, the practical advice is almost mirror images of each other. In Vietnam, check the specific, possibly quite literal rule for your city and sector before you pack, because someone with an official title may genuinely have an opinion about your jeans. In Australia, pack for "smart casual" as a safe default, dress up specifically for the interview, and don't worry too much after that — the data suggests almost nobody is actually tracking what you're wearing once you're in the door.
Either way, the real tell of how a workplace sees you isn't the clothes themselves — it's whether anyone there would ever bother to write the rule down.
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Photo by Quốc Khánh Photography via Pexels
Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.