RTO is popping up in another medium: fashion.
Fashion houses are tapping into the discourse and trend as return-to-office continues to be one of the much-debated workplace discussions following the pandemic.
“The pendulum is now swinging the other way; I feel like this is the fashion houses’ way of saying the power suit is back, dressing for work is back,” Beckie Klein of image consultancy Beckie + Martina told Business Insider. “It’s their way of saying polish is back.”
Brands like Prada and Stella McCartney are among those that have taken cues from the office in recent collections and campaigns.
“The back-to-office mandate has clearly reached designers worldwide, and they’re responding with collections that transform cubicle life into something actually worth dressing for,” said stylist and market editor DeVanté Rollins. “Designers are making returning to the office way more fun than we ever expected.”
Brands are riffing on RTO and officewear with their own “playful takes on corporate life, with exaggerated proportions in blazers and blouses,” Rollins added.
Prada’s fall/winter 2024 ad campaign, aptly titled “Now That We’re Here,” featured an ensemble cast of actors in workwear huddled around having conversations or talking over a corded phone.
“Bringing people together, to commune is to create,” it says. That feels like a pretty clear echo of many bosses’ stated reasoning for RTO: We work better together.
Stella McCartney’s winter 2025 womenswear collection includes tailored jackets, power shoulders, straight trousers, and pencil skirts. The looks represent “an exchange of professional and party codes,” the brand says, for a woman who is “an entrepreneur” and “the boss.”
At the brand’s show in Paris last month, guests got to see “Stella Corp,” replete with office chairs, desks, and branded swag. Did we mention the collection is called “Laptop to Lapdance?”
Ferrari’s inspiration for its fall/winter 2025 looks is the “Officina,” it says. Though that might not neatly translate to the corporate office setting — the brand says it encompasses “an artisanal workshop, a centre for study and a design lab” — the collection certainly looks office-inspired.
It’s a good time for fashion houses to be jumping on the RTO bandwagon.
Work and RTO feature particularly prominently in the cultural zeitgeist right now. The trending “clean girl” and minimalist styles share parallels with a lot of officewear, not to mention workwear aesthetics like “office siren” and “corpcore,” or corporate core, have been making the rounds on social media for a while now. The season finale of Apple’s workplace drama, “Severance,” may still be on everyone’s minds.
While haute couture pieces aren’t going from the catwalk to the conference room, luxury brands like Balenciaga are also putting an emphasis on office-appropriate attire in their ready-to-wear collections.
For the more budget-conscious, Uniqlo Europe showed off a line of workwear outfits in February set against a retro office-inspired office backdrop, with models posing at desks with old desktop computers, sitting atop copy machines, and leaning on water coolers.
The pandemic and its effects on work meant “the lines became so blurred” when it comes to dressing for work, said Martina Gordon of Beckie + Martina.
“It’s just very vague at the moment,” she told BI. “Everybody’s looking for guidance.
The question of what to wear to the office today is a tricky one. Many people returning to the office feel out of practice with dressing for it after working remotely during the pandemic and investing in comfy sweats and styles too casual for a corporate environment.
“There’s a huge question out there: What is business dress?” Klein said. “The brands are really stepping up to say, ‘This is a big question. We need to be the ones with the answer.’”
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