September 30, 2024
Have you been forced to start going back to your office? I hear from heroines all the time who are suddenly expected to be their office two or three days a week, and who are NOT amused…
Two issues I hear often:
- Business clothes from the “before” days just don’t fit, or don’t suit, and
- Quite a few people have received promotions (sometimes multiple promotions) in the interim, and feel that they should dress to a higher level than before.
SO… let’s start with this very lovely scarf, and see what we can do! If you’re only going to an office twice a week, you really only need a small wardrobe…
I saw four accent colors right away, as well as white…
Even at this late date in the world, I still feel that a suit is the easiest and most versatile way to look like you’re in charge:
scarf – Echo; earrings – Gorjana; butter tee shirt – L.L.Bean; blazer – Banana Republic; driving loafers – Rothy’s; bag – Banana Republic; pants – Banana Republic
But then, just to cover your bases, you definitely want a good looking pair of jeans that you can wear with less casual things so that you fit in with the gang – some days…
Rustic red tee – L.L.Bean; earrings – By Chavelli; scarf – Echo; cardigan blazer – J.Crew; black jeans – L.L.Bean; socks – Nordstrom; boots – Reformation
If you’re going to buy a suit, and there’s a skirt available… You know what I’m going to say – buy it! – unless you absolutely, positively, CERTAINLY will never wear it. And be certain to send it to be laundered every time you send the jacket and pants, even if you’ve not worn it…
Cardigan – L.K.Bennett; earrings – Harfi; scarf – Echo; striped shirt – Lands’ End; pearl and peridot bracelet – Gemondo; wool skirt – Banana Republic; pumps – Rockport
This next piece is sort of tricky – you could wear your suit pants again, but you may want a second pair of pants. Black and white tweed, or pinstripe, are possibilities, if you can find them. Also, if your suit pants come in two different cuts (these do!), you can get both of them, but then you’re sending FOUR pieces of your wardrobe to the laundry at the same time… So I’ve opted to give this heroine a pair of black chinos. I have these, and they’re indispensable!
Cobalt cardigan – Alex Mill; blue stone earrings – Kate Spade; scarf – Echo; black tee – L.L.Bean; bracelet – Kate Spade; chinos – L.L.Bean; leather sneakers – Mephisto
These four outfits come together into a tidy wardrobe, which would be easy to pack for a week or longer… Yes, it’s lots of shoes; maybe you could forego the sneakers, or the boots?
This wardrobe is certainly close to being foolproof; you may not want to wear a red tee shirt with a lime green cardigan, for example. Or maybe, when you add the scarf to your outfit, you won’t mind….
In that case, you would have 64 outfits from twelve garments. 4 times 4 times 4….
Every wardrobe makes me want to start packing for my vacation! And I’m not leaving until Halloween…
love,
Janice
p.s. Well THIS is timely – I share with you my opinion of what I packed for a trip to Paris! And how I didn’t need nearly as much as I had packed. But this next trip I have very little shopping planned… A side product of my ongoing closet nightmare, which I will share with you soon!
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I really like this. I never stopped going into work although when there were only a few of us in the building the dress code (not that there is one) didn’t seem to matter. I could pick any of my scarves and build a wardrobe like this. I love having different accent colors. Thank you Janice, and looking forward to your closet reveal!
I’m now required to be in the office 4-5 days/week instead of 2-3 … To be honest, its fine. As long as I have the theoretical ability to work from home (it’s a matter of principal!). Although I do miss the extra time to exercise…
However, I definitely noticed a shift in my style from pre-pandemic to immediately post (with less people in the office) to now. Things that used to work just don’t anymore (more of a vibe thing, less of a size thing) I also cant wear dresses or skirts to work.
In the fall/winter: sweater + trouser “uniform” every day gets boring, even if the colors change. My solution at the moment – mix the look a bit especially with accessory type and 1st layers. sweater + trouser + scarf. sweater + trouser + weighty necklace. sweater+ layer underneath + trouser. (layer underneath: cowl-neck shell under a v-neck sweater; collared shirt under a crew neck sweater, maybe plus a necklace). Maybe a cardigan in there. I may need to look into vests for another option – I do have a black velvet v-neck tank that, to me, could be worn as a vest… I mean, why not?
Janice, in this wardrobe you’re varying the uniform more with bottoms (pants vs skirt) and 2nd layers (cardigan vs suit jacket) while keeping the 1st layer pretty stable (long-sleeve tee for the most part). It’s a good variety :) I think the pant vs skirt change really lends to a very different vibe/feel, but I’m not sure how to achieve that with just trousers.
Good luck to all the heroines out there – especially if you’re trying to go back to non-sneakers! You have my empathy
Ezzy,
Oh I like your thinking on this as to how to change up the looks — great going ! I crave a variety of looks, but with limiting the total amount of pieces !
It’s a steady stream of solid colours that wears me down; I’ve learned that I need pattern! I wear scarves sometimes but that’s usually not enough. My fix is to find patterned tops in floral, two-tone botanical, paisley, stars…. I don’t have any plaid or stripes in my current rotation of tops but I’m open to them. Second layers and bottoms are solids but I allow myself the freedom to have fun with my tops and it has made a huge difference for me.
Would totally wear this wardrobe as the four bright accents all work for me.
Even before I retired, the suits I have just didn’t get worn as our office was business casual. So I decided to lose the matchy-matchy approach and dress the separates down by wearing the pants with just a blouse or sweater or the jackets with casual pants. Similar to Outfits #3 and #4 and Remix #2. Another approach is to mix jackets with pants from different suit.
I seem to remember a TVF wardrobe that used two suits as a base. Your last statement just triggered that but now I’m doubting if it’s a real post or not! 😶🌫️😶🌫️😶🌫️🤔
I think there was a post like this many years ago
OH it was very real – based on a quote from Chanel, with which I took enormous liberties!
https://www.theviviennefiles.com/2011/12/wardrobe-was-chanel-right.html/
love,
Janice
I love a variety of accent colors, so switch the base of the scarf and the suit to navy, and I could absolutely live (work!) in this.
Speaking of vacations, I took a long weekend out west to visit family earlier this year. I wore a pair of skinny jeans, navy ankle boots, a solid 3/4 sleeve henley, and a plaid velour hoodie. I packed solid 3/4 sleeve henleys in the other four colors found in the plaid, threw in a pair of medium wash bootcut jeans, and a pair of tennis shoes (my Midwest vocab coming through!) and I packed just right. Probably the lightest I’ve ever traveled, but I did have laundry facilities if something went wrong. Thank you, Janice! I will never be a minimalist, but my decades of overpacking may finally be over. (Did I ever mention the year I took 39 tops for a two week family beach vacation???? My color scheme was navy, white, and fuschia.)
I’ve never heard of a Henley. Is it a regional term? I’m in Eastern Canada and we probably just use a different term here.
A knit shirt that buttons near the necklines
https://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/65963?page=waffle-knit-henley&bc=&feat=henley-SR0&csp=a&attrValue_0=1498&searchTerm=henley&pos=1
I’d love to know where you found 3/4 sleeve henley’s, please! Your out west packing plan is great.
I found them online at JCP.com. I believe they are St. John’s Bay (one of their house lines). Very inexpensive, but as they are a bottom layer, I don’t mind. They actually wash and wear well.
Are you going to France in October? I’d very much like to know what you’re packing. I am meeting my daughter in Paris late October, then traveling to the south of France. Two weeks with a carry on that time of year has got me a little nervous, but I’m excited to go. It’ll be my first time there.
Great ideas (as always), Janice.
I do have a bit of a pet “peeve” when people talk about being “forced” to go back to the office. While I think modern workplaces need to evolve and change as social norms/etc., change, there are real and unintended consequences for those working mostly/fully from home. Small businesses/restaurants/downtown areas have made significant financial investments in keeping cities vibrant. As responsible citizens, we all have a stake in maintaining our communities, and it’s hard to do that if the “downtown” areas are emptied of many of the people that used to work there. I was shocked when we recently visited Seattle/Portland (we are Canadians) at how desolate, dreary and seeminly unsafe their downtown areas are post-pandemic. We have the same issues in the beautiful cities of Vancouver and Victoria where we live – the downtowns are struggling because so many fewer people are coming there to work anymore.
True, and very well stated. The Loop in Chicago is just starting to come back to where it was five years ago. Did anyone ever imagine that the effects of a pandemic could be so widespread, and so long-lasting?
hugs,
Janice
I have never worn a suit. Even when I worked, I wore separates. Being a Librarian, I had to be able to bend and stretch in my clothes. If I wore a jacket, my colleagues knew that I had an important meeting. I love colour and pattern on my top half.
As one librarian to another, I agree. I need to be able to bend and stretch, wash and wear, my clothes. When I did a ton of children’s programming, I wore a solid layer with a themed cardigan. My caregivers used to make remarks, but the kids loved it. Now I either wear a patterned dress with a soft topper, or solid bottoms with a colorful top.
For me, post pandemic dressing is mostly about being comfortable and expressing myself. Even though I’m in the office (and have been for 2 1/2 years now), I’m more casual because everyone else is and I mostly see people in virtual meetings, so my outfit hardly shows. Also I hate suit jackets – they’re just too confining for me. So my outfit formula these days is sleeveless dress + overshirt (light topper) when it’s warm, and long sleeved dress + cardigan when it’s colder. This allows me to adjust layers as needed, and mix and match to get the most out of my wardrobe.
Another link to the green sweater https://www.lkbennett.com/Clothing/Knitwear?_gl=1*h7pz78*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwu-63BhC9ARIsAMMTLXRxElPs4pWk7zxvLWfDJcA4SP3iVRurcwrIizdCvKvAeWnWA0e8y-waAqi7EALw_wcB
These days, I’d say unless you really need an actual proper suit for business professional dress codes, you’d make life much easier on yourself with separates that can washed in the machine individually rather than suit pieces that need to be dry cleaned as a unit. For example, in this capsule you could substitute the black pants and skirt of your choice for the suit bottoms and something like a black polka dot blazer for the suit jacket (I have a black blazer with small white polka dots that is much more fun than plain black but is still quite appropriate for many workplaces, and it’s easy to mix and match with various black bottoms because it’s obviously not trying to be a proper suit).
I can see how having the suit pants/skirt, chinos, and jeans levels of formality might be important for some heroines who operate in varied situations (like court vs. seeing clients in the office vs. non-client facing day), but I’d think carefully about whether I need that much variation. I’m not sure you’d want to devote 50% of your bottom pieces to business professional wear if you only spend 10% of your time needing that level of formality, for example. If your days are spent interacting with the same kinds of people in the same sorts of environments, you’d be better off concentrating your wardrobe at that level so you don’t find yourself having to wear your one pair of chinos 9 days out of 10 or whatever.
This is a place where the practicalities of a travel capsule and a regular capsule wardrobe for the day-to-day definitely are not the same.
I also think there’s a real distinction between a heroine who doesn’t fit her pre-pandemic workwear, finds it uncomfortable, no longer her style, etc. vs. a heroine who has been promoted and feels she needs to up her work style game. Heroines of the first type may find that her pre-pandemic wardrobe is too formal now that so many workplaces have become more casual (particular in offices where hybrid work is a thing). For these heroines, building a capsule around a suit would be doubling down on her current wardrobe’s problems. There’s a whole world of new styles of clothing that purposely combine “looks like work” and “feels like lounge” qualities she might want to explore, particularly with pants. (I personally never gave up wearing hard pants during the pandemic, but for those who did, going back to wearing stiff buttoned pants all day in the office may feel quite miserable, compounding the “forced back to the office” woes.)
Heroines of the second type may need to up their formality level (hence a proper suit)…or perhaps not! Sometimes heroines in a higher position at work will feel more psychologically comfortable/fit in with more formal clothing, but it may be that they need to elevate their style or add more polish at a similar formality level. So maybe she’s still dressing business casual, but she’s wearing “better” brands, everything she wears looks pristine and cared for, her accessories are higher quality, her personal grooming (hair, make up, nails, etc.) has gone up a notch. (Thank the gods I don’t need to present a polished work appearance!) In my organization, in situations where men are wearing suits and ties, women are often dressed in separates rather than proper suits. This is a know-your-workplace situation, but I do think in many cases that women have more leeway when it comes to dressing for work (which also means it can be much harder for women to gauge what is appropriate vs. what is not, of course, because the guidelines are less strict).