I attended a wedding in Melbourne on Saturday and the invitation said "casual". Mrs og told me "no, you can't wear shorts and thongs". So I wore a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Needless to say that Melbournians assume "casual" means full business formal (with suit) - only that the tie is removed.
They haven't any idea of being comfortable!
Yeesh. Smart casual appears to be splitting a hair between jeans + nice shirt or business gear without the suit or tie.
Perhaps it's also a blessing as much as a curse, but at least for men the standard shirt + tie business wear covers a wide spectrum of applications (from formal to important business to everyday business). Whereas women would have something different for almost any application, let alone
each event...
More back into the sub-thread, the dress standard does vary where I go. I typically wear jeans and a good shirt, as this is the norm where I work (defined as "smart casual"). Of course, if I've just come out of a formal business meeting / conference you'll see me in a blazer jacket, shirt and tie as per standard male business recipe.
Having said that, I've only been in the J lounge at fairly quiet times: once early in the morning (nary a business person there - only families and probably OWE travellers in Australia), a couple of times during the day on weekends (a couple of business people, the rest look like they're having a casual business weekend). In my QP experience, the minimum appears to be some sort of smart casual. For those of us with Hilton experience, think about the standard of dress for the Hilton Executive Lounge - that's typical of the dress standards in the QP experiences I've had.