Is Traditional Workwear Dead?

As far back as 2016, when pandemics were the preserve of sci-fi movies and history books, experts were talking about the demise of the suit. Last year, The Washington Post ran a piece entitled, “A history of the final dying days of the power suit”. It was referring to men’s workplace attire, but it got me thinking about women’s workwear and how it might evolve – or not – post-pandemic. Remote working won’t be a long-term reality for everybody. Many women will return to corporate environments, while others may simply be desperate to get back on-site and out of the domestic realm where they had happily been before the crisis. But will the formality of traditional workwear still be required? Will suits and sober separates still feel right in a post-pandemic world? Will they still infer authority and confidence or will they be seen as archaic and unnecessary? After a year – at least – of everybody doing the very same jobs in sweatshirts and jog pants, it’s difficult to predict whether, in the world that awaits us, we’ll want more formality or less.

The phrase “power suit” feels incredibly outdated when applied to women. It conjures images of Melanie Griffith in Working Girl and Diane Keaton in Baby Boom. It’s an eighties cliché and a style device that was employed in an era when women were still a novelty in the workplace. Power suits were worn by men and thereby associated with authority and success. Women wore them in an attempt to fit the masculine mould that defined organisations in the seventies and eighties, and to try to mirror men’s success by mirroring their image. Strong shoulders, somber colours, clean lines, but with high heels – this was your sartorial calling card if you were an ambitious working woman 40 years ago. It was also a way of diverting the male gaze. If women dressed like men then perhaps they’d be spared the ogling, come-ons and put-downs that were part and parcel of the inequalities second wave feminism fought to correct both in and out of the workplace. Just watch Mad Men to get a flavour of how incredibly awkward and defeated many women must have felt in male-dominated environments in a world that was about two decades off coining the phrase “politically incorrect”. It’s no wonder the androgynous power suit became a refuge, something to hide their femininity, and vulnerability, behind.

Women gave up power suits long before men did. I think this is in part because clothes have always been such a powerful tool of self-expression for women (sometimes the only one they’ve had) and adopting a generic look must have felt to them as if they were trading in their personalities for positions within the male hierarchy of office life. Feminism has never been about compromising a woman’s femininity or femaleness, it’s about giving them equal status within a patriarchal landscape. For the most part, women have never been afraid of fashion, but rather they’ve understood how to use it to their advantage. The Washington Post article made me laugh when it said that “...fashion began to muck around with suits...Suits were no longer about power. They were about style.” This was presented as a terrifying prospect for any number of men; as the sartorial equivalent of a pharmacist mucking about with their sleeping pills. Now men will wake up in a fug. How will they know they’re an authority, a success, someone who should be in charge without their daily dose of power suit?

Since the nineties, women’s workwear has been a much more nuanced affair. Separates mostly replaced suits, and although sober neutrals and smart tailoring remained, they were infused with subtle but feminine details, directional cuts and unique features. Women could dress for their personalities while looking professional and feminine at the same time. These outfits also offered comfort. Pinching pencil skirts were no longer considered sophisticated and modern, but rather a looser A-line look became the more chic choice. Blouses which posed the dilemma of how many open buttons was too many were swapped for easy cashmere knits or starched cotton shirts, which looked better buttoned at the neck. Workwear developed an ease that was reflected in how women performed and functioned in their clothes; the answer is effortlessly.

I wonder why we’d want to walk away from this? Unlike the power suit, modern workwear isn’t a chore, a compromise or an expense that’s wasted because the pieces don't translate into other areas of your life. These more nonchalant separates can be paired with jeans at weekends, with camisoles and tuxedo jackets for evenings. Although I have always worked in creative environments not corporate, my wardrobe is one entity that can be segued into workwear, evening wear or weekend wear, depending on how I style each item. According to InStyle.com, post-coronavirus, “We’ll ditch the last of our uncomfortable, gendered work clothing.” Didn’t this happen a long time ago? Do women still feel bound by knee-length skirts and pointed lapels? Perhaps in The City in London, where chalk stripe suits remain an appropriate workwear option for men (rather than caricature), but surely not in Dublin? I have a friend who is a tax accountant at KPMG, a company I would have thought, if any, had strict directives on dress and traditional guidelines on what to wear, but she told me that the official dress code was recently (pre-pandemic) downgraded from formal to smart casual. She wears fluid shirtdresses from Cos and pleated skirts from LK Bennett.

I’m inclined to agree with InStyle.com’s other prediction that “When this is all over, we’ll want to look sharp”. I’ve restrained myself from going hell for leather buying loungewear because eventually, I know it’s going to be relegated to the tiny space within my wardrobe that it’s always occupied. This is a moment in time. A transformative one, admittedly, but I don’t buy into the idea that athleisure wear is it from here on in. There’s too many wonderful clothes in the world, too many incredible designers, too many intriguing sartorial ideas to live a life in loungewear alone. When I was in my twenties I thought the worst thing imaginable was a job that required a uniform. All the fun of getting dressed each morning would vanish, along with my motivation to get out of bed. Whereas these days it’s breakfast that persuades me out from under the cosy covers (I’m always hungry in the morning), when I was young it was my wardrobe. While I’ve embraced the novelty of comfort clothes this year, I love those days when I have a reason to put together an outfit that makes me feel like pre-pandemic Marie. Mostly I Instagram these outfits now because in amongst the sweatshirts, cargo pants and trainers I wear a lot of the time when at my home desk, I need the visual reminder that, yes, clothes are still a big part of who I am.

Similarly, for many other women, those beautifully cut pieces they used to wear to work are another, equally important, aspect of themselves that they’re not ready to forgo. The AW20 collections reflected most women’s enduring love for modern suiting and contemporary tailoring, with designers from Prabal Gurung and Prada to Gabriella Hearst and Hugo Boss delivering exquisite separates that define “power dressing” for a new decade – soft, versatile, beautiful. These days, men may be in a muddle about which clothes make them feel powerful and relevant, but I think women have it figured out, and loungewear doesn’t feature.

Is Traditional Workwear Dead?

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