The average person spends about a third of their life at work. This means that if your job doesn't have a prescribed uniform, roughly 90,000 hours—10 whole calendar years—you're responsible for dressing yourself professionally. Do you really want to squander all that time by mailing it in, blending into the walls of your cubicle in an endless cycle of shapeless stretch chinos and anonymous golf shirts? Or would you rather look and feel like yourself—your best, most expressive, most locked-in self—as you fearlessly carve a fulfilling career path?
We've dedicated the latest installment of our Dos and Don'ts series to helping you achieve the latter. (If you haven't already, catch up on the first two entries tackling general style and wedding attire.) The office is no place for slacking off sartorially, no matter how overrun your Google Calendar might get each week or how conservative your company's dress code might seem.
On that note: We understand that it might seem silly for us fashion freaks at GQ—who work in an office with no discernible dress code, where you're as likely to clock a pair of leather jeans or dainty ballet slippers as you are a nice knit polo and trousers—to be doling out edicts for appropriate workplace style. This is why we've called in backup from a handful of stylish professionals* from a wide spectrum of industries—from tech and finance to politics and advertising—to help us develop rules and strategies for dressing better that apply to the broadest possible range of office workers.
It's time to shed the corporate cocoon and dress with purpose and conviction. These are GQ's Dos and Don'ts of Office Style.
*Several names changed to allow for total honesty and good-natured ribbing of swagless coworkers.
Dos:
- Dress for your most important event of the day. If you've got a high-profile meeting or presentation on the GCal, you probably already know to dress accordingly: steam your best shirt, lint-roll your favorite jacket, match your lucky socks. But you won't regret also doing so on the days when you plan to go somewhere nice after work, whether it's a dressier industry event or a date night at the theater. That also saves you the embarrassment of changing clothes in a bathroom stall.
- Cologne conscientiously. It's basic manners to smell clean and fresh for your coworkers—but a spritz or two of fragrance is all you need. You don't want to be responsible for triggering migraines across the open floor plan.
- A sticker or two to help you identify your laptop is chill, but don't go overboard. You don't want it to start looking like Billie Joe's Stratocaster.
- Just because the standards have loosened, doesn't mean you need to match them. Sean, a litigator in his mid-30s, has seen a distinct shift in his firm's dress code in recent years. "Pre-COVID, it was far stricter," he says. "You'd never see jeans or tennis shoes in the office." The older attorneys returned to work in the same sharp suits they'd always worn, but the younger crowd was less willing to give up the relaxed standards they enjoyed during the WFH era. "It does them a pretty big disservice," Sean says, "because I have to go out and convince clients, usually much older than I am, to entrust me with [their cases]. If I show up looking like a 22-year-old who can't figure out how to iron a shirt, I'm never going to get that work. It's undermining their ability to grow and get the experience they want. I would feel more comfortable bringing younger people who work for me into client meetings and onto Zoom calls if I wasn't wondering, 'Is this person going to look presentable?'"
- Treat your home office like an office. Neville, an A&R executive for a record label, works from home full-time—his company doesn't have an office in the city where he lives. But you'd never know it from his highly regimented morning routine. "I make a point to shower and get fully dressed and ready every morning, no matter what I have going on that day," he says. "And I never wear sweatpants, which I don't think anyone over the age of six should be doing. It's important for me to feel presentable when I work—even just combing my hair makes a difference."
- Break out your funniest watch. You might not be able to rock that one conversation-starting vintage sweatshirt you love to your formal workplace, but you can wear a timepiece with a cool backstory—whether that's a more personal history or an obscure reference with a fabled past. See who takes the bait in your office: Maybe you'll make friends with a like-minded collector or, even better, enchant a colleague into falling down the horological rabbit hole themselves.
- Consider how your outfit sounds. There's one wardrobe rule at startup founder Tracy's office: Absolutely no flip-flops. And it's not (only) for the reasons you might think, like a distaste for seeing gnarly toes or a fear of potential odors. "It's the noise," she says. "I don't want to hear your sandals slapping against your bare feet as you walk by my desk. That's too much." As Lil Wayne once put it: "Real Gs move in silence like lasagna." Even in a casual office, you should be wary of extra swishy track pants that sound like someone loudly raking leaves any time you cross your legs at your desk. And the wrong sort of clicky, rotating watch bezel—the horological equivalent of a fidget spinner—can cause auditory havoc during a meeting.
- Prioritize comfort, because you never know when you may need to pound the pavement. Chi Ossé, a New York City Council member, prefers a more relaxed style that allows him to move freely throughout his day. "If you're wearing something uncomfortable, you're not gonna be in the best mood," he says.
- If you're wearing a tie, cinch it all the way up. You don't look like Johnny Rotten with that button undone and your neckwear loosened. You just look sloppy.
- There's a right kind of quarter-zip sweater. It has a chunkier knit, a more substantial collar, and doesn't resemble anything you'd see on the sideline of a college basketball game.
- Suit up when the mood strikes. Just because it feels good. Tom Ford once likened suits to armor—and in the modern-day feudal system that is the corporate hierarchy, they're still the fastest way to look like menswear royalty.
- Your office wardrobe should be individualized, not optimized. Contrary to tech-world proselytizing, the algorithm doesn't know what you need—and getting dressed is only, like, 25% of what you "need" anyway. Resist clicking on the blazer your feed served to you and 15,000 other lost souls; do your research, try a bunch on, and pick the one that makes you happiest when you glance in the mirror.
- Set your watch. Watch guys are notorious for never setting the time on their watches, but according to noted vintage dealer Eric Wind, that's the worst thing you can do at work. "You don't want that subliminal or direct message that you're not responsible with time," Wind says. "No one's doing the Andy Warhol"—who famously wore a permanently unwound Cartier Tank—"in an office setting."
- Get the interesting haircut—but make sure it's, like, the fifth most interesting thing about you. Perhaps you've heard: there are no good men's haircuts. If you think yours is the exception to the rule, the least you can do is ensure that your personality is half as intriguing as your fashion mullet.
- If you're going to be the "funky shirt guy," own it. It's much better than being the guy who wore that one funky shirt that one time at that one meeting.
- Don't be afraid to (reasonably) stray from the pack. Sure, we're all cogs in the machine, but does that mean we have to dress like one? For some, the uniformity of an office-culture-dictated dress code may be a source of comfort—not having to think about what you wear every day can be a relief—but I'm willing to bet that you, dear GQ reader, are down to deviate from the herd. Hell, if everyone at your office is wearing a gray fleece vest, why not scroll eBay for a slightly cooler '90s-vintage Patagonia version? At the very least, rocking a slightly offbeat loafer or swagger trousers could boost your aura; at best, your bosses might actually appreciate the effort.
- Your work jeans should be straight-leg and rip-free. Save the freaky flares and ultra-wide cuts for your off-hours—and leave the skinny jeans in 2013 where they belong.
- Know your role. "People always say you should dress for the job you want," says Neville, the record label executive, "but I really think you should dress for the job you have. If you're an intern, for example, it's best to look neat and tidy, because those are attributes people are hoping you'll deliver in your work. If you dress too flashy or lavishly when
