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Primark Dress Code

So our departmental managers literally threatened everyone with a disciplinary actions for not wearing theme appropriate clothing. Is this reasonable?

So, I have working on UK-based store in US branch named Primark for more than 6 months. In general, we had couple of restrictions for this stores : like we are not allowed to carry cell phone with us/ put it on the pocket (even for emergency purposes), no keys/paper/utensil/anything, no 15 minutes break in between, not being allowed to use restroom no more than 4 minutes. I completely understand we need permission from departmental managers to leave restroom, but threatening with termination for taking more than 4 minutes is like...

They treat like employees and supervisors like a servant in this store, like bossing them around, and threatening them with disciplinationary actions for engaging conversation with customers/ or each other.

Now, they took way too far with dress code policy. They are forcing every employee to participate spirit week or to wear themed dress. Like their policy is they will either sent their employees home or terminate their employment, if employee cannot participate or can afford themed dress for so called 'dressed down day' or 'spirit week'. Well some of us don't feel comfortable with few of the theme weeks/ dress down days where we will be forced to wear clothes that is inappropriate to workplace. Like for some spirit week days, we have Pajama Day, Shorts Day, Underwear Day, Inside Out t-shirt day, Cheerleader Day, and mandatory costume days for Halloween. This really boils my blood, as I personally don't want to get bullied or receive negative Backlash from customers just because management forced me adhere to work-appropriate theme dress (like say making us wear pajama, shorts, underwear, or inside out t-shirt). Second, I don't feel comfortable wearing pajamas, or shorts during winter, or cold weather. Third, dressing up as cheerleader and greeting customers sounds like lame, as I am worried about being laughed when standing and cheering customers who goes to self-checkout.

We already informed this situation to HR manager, and they are claiming that this dress code policy is implemented by the NEW District manager of Primark. After hearing this from HR, this make us realize why store manager or assistant store manager were so clueless after hearing about the change in dress code. Just to be noted, we never had that store policy when this store was ran by old district manager. I have a feeling that they are trying to make extra profit off of Spirit Week participants, as they literally admitted that the management and corporate of this stores are out budget.

What do you think about this dress code policy, and store policy in general? Is this policy would increase turnover rate in this store? Is this the only store doing this or there is other store that implemented dress code policy like that?