This post is part of a series on dressing for new (or temporary) office jobs. See the whole series.
I’m wrapping up my series on dressing for a new work environment this week, but before I do, I wanted to share a few of my favorite links from around the web on both building a work-oriented wardrobe and on staying true to your identity and sense of style at the office. This list is by no means exhaustive, but a few things that have caught my eye and inspired some good thinking on my part — and not necessarily because I agreed with all of them!
- Sally’s fabulous recent posts on “intermediate style” and dressing down your work wardrobe at Already Pretty.
- Kat Griffin of Corporette’s guide to wardrobe essentials for the summer associate or intern. This list is pretty prescriptive and YMMV outside of big New York institutional office jobs, but it’s worth thinking about and interrogating yourself.
- Likewise, Kat’s list of what *not* to wear in these settings is worth a look.
- This thread from the Careerist on the class implications of office dress—and what messages your clothes do or don’t send to your employer about your professional goals, with all its somewhat disturbing implications.
- Academichic’s collection of posts on interview attire.
- Amy of BiblioMOMia’s post on dressing with power, confidence and originality while presenting at a professional conference.
- Rosel’s love letter to one of her work wardrobe essentials, a pair of black trousers that were initially outside her comfort zone.
Have a favorite link I should add to this list? Let me know! Leave a comment below, or send me an e-mail or a tweet!
Like what you just read? You can subscribe to Narrowly Tailored via RSS or bloglovin’, or follow me on Twitter to be the first to know what I’m up to.
This post is part of a series on dressing for new (or temporary) office jobs. See the whole series.
Last week, we talked about navigating the office dress code in a new environment, including the often-mystifying differences between the “official” dress code and the on-the-ground sartorial norms. This week, we’ll talk about what to do with those guidelines: some thoughts on shopping strategies, accessorizing, and “essential” wardrobe items.
First, a few things to consider:
- Your time horizon and repeat tolerance: If you’re just acquiring a few things to get you through a summer job or internship, your perspective on what kinds of things you should have and what quality they need to be will be different than if you’re starting a permanent job after leaving college or graduate school. Likewise, the size (and fashion-awareness) of your office, the number of people you come into contact with every day, and your personal preferences will affect the percentage of the time you want to spend wearing (or feeling like you’re wearing) different outfits.
- Your budget. This goes pretty much without say.
- What the dress code in your office is really like.
- Other considerations that restrict the size of your capsule wardrobe. For example, my dear friend K. commuted from New Haven to D.C. every week so she could see her husband on the weekends while we were working over the summer, and didn’t have access to anything you could meaningfully call a closet for much of the duration. It didn’t prevent her from having great style, but it did place some obvious restrictions on how many pieces she had in her rotation.
- Any particular rules in your office regarding accessories. Your office may or may not allow peep-toed shoes, dangling earrings, etc. Accessories rules tend to be ones that can be bent more easily, but your mileage may vary.
A few truly essential pieces:
- Your interview suit. Should be as basic as can be (and therefore almost endlessly remixable). Ideally, you have multiple pieces (e.g., pants and skirt that match the same blazer, or a skirt and a shift dress).
- For goodness sake, a pair of sensible shoes. This is just common sense, but particularly true in the law firm/consulting summer program context. People will take you places, you will walk a lot on terrible city sidewalks, and there is nothing professional about desperately sore feet or heels that have been demolished in sidewalk grates. (Take it from someone who ruined a pair of brand new heels on the first day of my summer program as a 1L walking halfway across the city to go to lunch with my mentor. Sigh.)
- One, possibly two, pairs of basic “office” pumps. These are the shoes that match your interview suit and, hopefully, virtually everything else in your work capsule wardrobe. Maybe not the most exciting pair of shoes ever, but the ones that will be unobjectionable in virtually all settings in which you think you’ll find yourself.
- A day dress (or two) in a solid fabric that you really, really love. There are two schools of thought here about neutral or colored, but this is another question for common sense and good judgment about where you fit in your professional universe. Ideally, this is also a dress that can go under a blazer of some kind, or a cardigan, or be worn by itself when the occasion calls for it.
- In a more formal office, a second and possibly a third suit. How many suits you need will depends on the availability of suit alternatives in your office and your closet, other things that might be considered business formal, and how many pieces you’re able to acquire in a given suit.
- In a business casual office, a few key separates that hold up well and play well with a variety of colors. Depending on your preference, this may mean more skirts or pants, but should probably also include one additional blazer, perhaps in a more distinctively colored or textured fabric.
Different approaches to building a work wardrobe:
- The cohesive capsule. If you’re really starting from scratch, and you’re confident about the dress norms in the office you’ll be working in, and your budget permits this approach, you might consider acquiring a capsule wardrobe that all more or less fits together all at once. Personally, I tend to struggle with this one, mostly because I like being able to react to changes in my circumstances (and my mood!) as I get used to a new environment.
- The gradual approach. Just like it sounds, this one works best if you know your closet better than you know the environment you’ll be working in: figure out what you’ll need for the first week or two, and then fill in the gaps as you get to know the environment and what your peers and superiors are wearing.
- The not-so-conformist approach. Riskier, but an option when you’re (a) working in a smaller office and won’t be part of a large, identifiable peer group, (b) already have a significant stable of workplace-appropriate items in your closet and (c) have a longer time horizon. Edit a capsule of items that fit these genres, but don’t necessarily all fit together quite so tightly. Want to try to be a little nonconformist but still blend in where necessary? My favorite place to start is with your shoes.
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This post is part of a series on dressing for new (or temporary) office jobs. See the whole series.
Almost every office has one.
No, not that slightly nosy coworker who somehow manages to know everything about everyone’s lives (those too, though). A dress code. Unfortunately, for a document that’s intended to provide clarity of expectations ahead of time, the average office dress code is riddled with unwritten (and often unspoken) rules and norms. So, how do you develop a strategy for navigating appropriate dress in these muddy waters? Here are a few questions to consider in assembling a “capsule wardrobe” of work essentials.
- Does your dress code define office dress as “business casual” or “professional attire” or ”business formal”? Obviously, you’ll have greater flexibility in a business casual environment.
- If the dress code says business casual, does it really mean it? For example, at many law firms, the dress code will say something along the lines of, “our office is business casual, but many attorneys prefer to wear formal business attire most days.” Pay attention to the norms that appear to apply to your peers, rather than the blanket guidelines for the office as a whole.
- Even if the dress code is business casual, will you be in situations that otherwise require more formal attire? Even in a business casual office, if you’re a lawyer, you have to go to court sometimes. Or if you’re a consultant, you have to meet with clients. Or [insert important outside-the-office obligation here]. How often do these kinds of settings come up? Do you usually know ahead of time, or will you need to keep an emergency suit stashed in your office?
- How does your office define formal business attire? In some offices, formal business attire would include a dress (usually with sleeves) on its own, without a jacket or other topper. If this is you, consider investing in a few (remixable) dresses that can be worn on their own. If formal business attire means you’re wearing a jacket but not necessarily a suit, consider what kinds of suit alternatives might be appropriate.
- If you’ll be working during the summer, does your office support the Right to Bare Arms? If it doesn’t, is it just a “no tanktops” rule, or are short sleeves also considered inappropriate? Are jackets and cardigans equally acceptable arm coverings?
- What are rules about footwear? Are peep-toes permissible? How high is too high? Are flats famed or frowned upon?
Like what you just read? You can subscribe to Narrowly Tailored via RSS or bloglovin’, or follow me on Twitter to be the first to know what I’m up to.
This post is part of a series on dressing for new (or temporary) office jobs. See the whole series.
I love suits. Really. For professional women, suits are easy, confidence inspiring, and—in the case of the right suit—pretty neat to look at. For many younger women early in their careers, however, the truly great suit can be financially out of reach, or if you have one (for example, an interview suit), odds are you don’t have enough of them to get by on suits alone. Whether you’re pregnant, frugal, or just otherwise uninspired by the idea of wearing The Same Black Banana Republic Suit every day, here are a few of my favorite “suit alternative” strategies, aimed at those days where some kind of topper is required, but you don’t absolutely have to wear a suit. These are organized in decreasing order of formality.
The Dress + Blazer
Probably my favorite category of suit alternative, particularly for comfort’s sake. It’s also the closest to putting on a suit in terms of how easy it is to put together while you’re running out the door. As my bump expanded, I tended to choose flowier styles for the dress underneath, while relying on blazers to preserve a sense of crispness and proportion. It’s also a great way to dress up jersey for the office: you may feel like you’re wearing something as comfortable as your PJs, but odds are few folks will be able to tell. While your office may vary in terms of allowable brightness levels, you want some level of contrast between dress and jacket: remember that the first rule of trying to get away with not wearing a suit is not looking like you’re trying to get away with wearing suit pieces that don’t quite match!
The Specialty Jacket
A slightly more advanced suit-faking strategy, but still one of my favorites. This is probably the second most “formal” suit alternative, and like the dress and blazer combo, can work even in settings where a full suit would be required (this is clothing you could wear to court, at least sometimes). For my two cents, it works best with the kind of blazer or jacket that never matched anything to begin with, the kind of standout piece that will elevate relatively tame, basic separates (for example, black slacks or a skirt and a relatively simple top or shell). If you think of a suit as normally involving a package of expectations about color, texture, pattern and shape, I like to think about upending one or two of these at a time, rather than all four.
The Dress-As-Business-Formal Option
The availability of this option depends almost entirely on the dress code of your office (other applicable forum), but if you’re lucky, it’ll include language describing a dress as “business formal” or “professional attire” for women. Though the informal rules tend to vary as to whether or not your office supports the right to bare arms, it helps to proceed with caution on this front, wearing either a dress with long or 3/4-length sleeves or a cardigan over a sleeveless dress. While this option typically won’t work if you have to go to court or a job interview, in the right circumstances, it can be an easy, reliable go-to option for office dressing.
The Cardigan
Though it only works for those times when you really, really don’t have to wear a suit, or in a predominantly business casual environment, but where it’s consistent with your office dress code, a cardigan can be the glue that holds separates together and makes a short sleeved or sleeveless shell or tee appropriate for the office. Again, it’s usually not appropriate attire for court or for a meeting with a non-business-casual client, but can work well for a day spent predominantly at your desk doing research, going to lunch with peers or folks only slightly more senior, or routine, in-office meetings with senior folks you aren’t meeting for the first time. It can also be a nice way to experiment with the boundaries of acceptable color, texture and pattern.
Do you work in a suits-every-day office, or one that’s more casual? What’s your go-to suit alternative?
This series is just one of several I have in the works for the coming weeks, supplementing our regular daily style content. Got additional questions or ideas you’d like to see me address in more depth than a regular outfit post? Let me know! E-mail narrowlytailored at gmail dot com, leave a comment or tweet @narrowtailoring.
Congratulations! You landed your dream gig for the summer, or full-time after graduating [insert form of professional school here]. You’re moving to [City of Your Dreams] for [the next ten weeks/OMGtherestofyourlife]. The catch? It’s a sartorially conservative environment, and you’re meeting new people every day.
While plenty of people have put together lists of what to wear (and what not to wear!) in such a situation (like Kat Griffin’s list from Corporette that made the rounds a few years ago), I wondered if it was possible to come up with a list of more lived-in style suggestions…and ones that didn’t seem to require buying a whole new wardrobe for a job I was going to have for a relatively brief period of time. While, as always, your mileage may vary, this series focuses on incorporating the pieces—and the preferences—you already have, and dressing appropriately for what is often a complicated-to-navigate stylistic environment while dressing like yourself. To that end, over the next few weeks, I’ll cover topics like…
- My own wardrobe essentials list (to be taken with the appropriate grain of salt!)
- Some thoughts on navigating the office dress code
- Suit alternatives for when you do — and don’t — really have to wear one
- Dressing for work-related social events
- Business casual dressing, with a few thoughts on the emergency suit
Hi! I'm S. Welcome to Narrowly Tailored, a blog about life and style from a law student and new mom. In short: work and life gets dressed; balance mostly gets amused.Follow Along
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