WSJ Your Money Briefing - How Gen Z Is Shaking Up Office Appropriate Workwear

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

As Gen Z enters the office, work wardrobes are out but crop tops, pajama pants and miniskirts are fair game. Wall Street Journal reporter Lane Florsheim joins host Ariana Aspuru to discuss how online trends like “office siren” and “corpcore” are establishing new, edgier rules for work appropriate attire.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Here's your money briefing for Friday, January 24th. I'm Arianna Aspuru for the Wall Street Journal. The line between getting dressed for the office and getting dressed up for fun is becoming more hazy as younger workers are obliterating traditional rules about how

to dress for work. I think that a lot of Gen Z and people in general want to invest in pieces they can wear anywhere and really get their money's worth. So if you're buying a blazer you want it to be like your office blazer or your going out blazer or your running out to brunch blazer, you want it to be like your office blazer, your going out blazer, your running out to brunch blazer. We'll talk with Wall Street Journal reporter Elaine Floresheim about how you can make your clothes work beyond 9 to 5 and stay on trend.

That's after the break. In a darkly comedic look at motherhood and society's expectations, Academy Award-nominated Amy Adams stars as a passionate artist who puts her career on hold to stay home with her young son. But her maternal instincts take a wild and surreal turn as she discovers the best, yet fiercest, part of herself. Based on the acclaimed novel, Nightbitch is a thought-provoking and wickedly humorous film from Searchlight Pictures. Nightbitch is now streaming only on Disney+. Classic office staples like suits and pencil skirts are getting a new twist,

as trends like office siren and CorpCorp gain popularity with younger workers. Wall Street Journal reporter Lane Floresheim joins me. Lane, why is workwear such a constant conversation, especially online? Workwear, like all clothing, is emotional. One of the women I interviewed for this story about how Gen Z is dressing said that a lot of Gen Z thinks that going into an office would be more fun if they dressed well. And I think that's something that anyone in any generation can probably relate to. How is the way we thought about work wear evolved over the last few years? I mean, I

feel like it's always changing. Even before the pandemic, you saw office dressing getting more casual. I was looking at some old journal articles and in 2016, we wrote about how JP Morgan said that employees don't always have to wear suits. But then of course you had the pandemic and everyone's in comfy clothes, sweatpants all the time. So I think you both have people wanting to be more casual and comfortable but then you also have people who like the woman I mentioned, want to be able to express themselves with how they dress for the office. And they want to feel fashionable. And they don't want to feel like this is my buttoned up office look that I would never wear out to dinner with

friends. So how different is Gen Z's perspective on workwear from their older colleagues? Like, what are we seeing? One of the most interesting parts of reporting this story was learning that a lot of women, especially young women, are shifting away from having a work section of their closet and an everything else section of their closet. I think that a lot of Gen Z and people in general

want to invest in pieces they can wear anywhere and really get their money's worth. So if you're buying a blazer, you want it to be your office bla if you're buying a blazer, you want it to be like your office blazer, you're going out blazer, you're running out to brunch blazer. It's kind of having things in your closet that are multi-purpose, including a blazer, I'm hearing mini skirts, crop tops, like is that what we're seeing too? I think that for all of these things there are people who are wearing

crop tops to the office. The Journal did an entirely separate article about that. I wrote a story a few months back about women wearing pajama pants as regular pants and sometimes to the office. And I think with all of these things, it's kind of like a you make the judgment call, right? I also think a big part of it is styling. Olympia Gayeut, who's the Women's Creative Director

at J.Crew was talking about how you can get away with a mini skirt if you're styling it with like tights and a sweater polo, for example. That is like a pretty relatively modest look. How is this corp core trend being received by others in the office? I think it's twofold. On the one hand, these trends and aesthetics like CorpCorp and Office Siren and Corporate Fetish really started as social media aesthetics and aren't necessarily

meant to be super prescriptive with telling people this is how you should dress for the office. But Office Siren especially really oftentimes references the 80s and 90s office with like pencil skirts and the little glasses and pinstripes and so it's kind of like a fun way just to get dressed in general. Brands and influencers drive a lot of these styles that we see. Who are the key names and companies behind this? I interviewed a number of the ones that I think are pretty key for the story, which are also kind of like oftentimes like mall brands and pretty accessible brands like J. Crew and Mango, Aritzia and the Frankie Shop.

One of the brands that I was really interested to talk to for the story is Revolve because they're this big women's retailer online and they haven't really offered that much work wear until these trends kind of came up and now they've really leaned into it and there are actually some people on TikTok who will like make videos lightly roasting their work wear section because it'll have things in it like micro shorts and cropped vests

and like even I think I saw a backless gown in there at one point. But I talked to the chief merchandising officer of Revolve, Divya Mathur, for the story and she said, you know, those edits are supposed to be fun and fashiony and kind of about the office that you wish you worked at, not always to be taken super, super literally. I interviewed Emily Sundberg who writes the business newsletter feed me for the story And she was talking about how a lot of influencers

She knows like really had the goal of like doing a panel last year And she said something that made me laugh which is like they really wanted to do a panel and be a girl boss even if the panels like in the back of a restaurant and this kind of dressing can also Provide like a layer of legitimacy for some people who want to be taken seriously as you know founders or influencers or you know Whatever it is if someone wants to step out of their comfort zone with their outfit on Monday But isn't ready to fully commit to a closet revamp or an office siren revamp What are things that they can do to try out the corp core trend on a budget?

I mean this didn't make it into the story, but one of the brand founders I spoke to, Gaelle Dravet, who does the Frankie shop, who was talking about how just a blazer is the easiest way to look put together and office ready in, you know, two seconds. It's an easy way to kind of like dip your toes into this trend. And also so many brands have different styles of blazers now. I was talking about the more relaxed fit, but Aritzia has like a cinched fit blazer that can be kind of a going out look as well. And some of them have cropped blazers and you know things like that. So it's really like a wide range that you can look into for yourself if you're curious.

So dipping your toes with a blazer, maybe a fun necklace, and then full on backless gown? Yeah that might be you know for later on. That's WSJ Reporter Lane Florsheim and that's it for your money briefing. Tomorrow we'll have our weekly markets wrap up, what's news in Markets. And then we'll be back on Monday. This episode is produced by Jess Jupiter. I'm your host Arianna Aspudu, Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Melanie Roy, Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer, Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors and Philana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. Thanks for listening.