The office beckons: Time for “power casual”
Instagram ads for one brand are touting a style known as “power casual.” Other retailers are calling it “business comfort” or “workleisure.” Heels are dropping lower or disappearing altogether, pants are getting “elasticized,” and Silicon Valley executives are throwing graphic T- shirts under blazers to smuggle a version of selfexpression into a board meeting.
Welcome to the new world — and marketingspeak — of work clothing.
Retailers that once trafficked in solidly reliable dresses are scrambling to cater to the new demands of the hybrid workweek. They want to tempt a dazed customer base that is returning to offices and in- person meetings with trends such as “the casualization of the lower half” and fabrications that look like 2019- era professional garb while offering “secret comfort.” ( The secret is usually spandex.)
In fact, the retail industry has so fully embraced softer and stretchier styles that some professionals say they have had to turn to used- clothing sites to find appropriately formal clothing for law firms and government jobs.
“There’s very little separation now between where you work and where you live,” said Sarah Lafleur, CEO of M. M. Lafleur, a women’s clothing brand that is trying to be known for more than office apparel. “We’re seeing the same trend happening in clothing.”
The shift isn’t just a matter of taste — it has ramifications for mass apparel, a significant segment of the economy, and the physical face of retail, which is the second- biggest private employer in the United States. Revenue from women’s apparel in the United States was $ 132.7 billion in 2021, up 7% from 2019, while sales of men’s apparel rose 11% from 2019 to $ 76.5 billion, according to data from the NPD Group, a market research firm.
As more of that revenue shifts into denim, sneakers and the like, particularly for women, retailers must keep pace. Already, NPD found that dress footwear sales declined 34% last year from 2019, while men’s tailored clothing for the 12 months that ended in February was down 20% from two years earlier. Mass chains such as Banana Republic and J. Crew have been shrinking their store counts while adjusting their assortments.
Meanwhile, Lululemon now has annual sales that exceed the Gap and Banana Republic brands combined and aims to double that in the next five years. Lululemon and Athleta, which is owned by Gap Inc., both promote work clothes on their websites. Customers are willing to pay for comfort:
Gap said on a September call that across its brands, the average unit retail price, a measure of what a garment sells for, was $ 12 at Old Navy, $ 40 at Banana Republic and $ 60 at Athleta.
How people dress for work can be a reflection of the labor market. Economic downturns, such as the collapse of the dot- com boom or the 2008 financial crisis, have often prompted returns to dressier clothing as a form of risk aversion — people want to show the boss that they’re making an effort. In the current climate, when the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since the pandemic took hold, employees might think: My employer is lucky to have me, so why should I wear pants that zip?
The pandemic caused so much psychological distress for Americans that “the last thing bosses want to pay attention to” is whether an employee’s clothing is appropriate for work, said Jaehee Jung, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. “People are also endorsing more casual looks for their employees so that they feel more content and happy,” she added.
Work is confusing. Clothes are, too.
M. M. Lafleur’s stores, including its Bryant Park location in the New York City borough of Manhattan, were booked up in March with women seeking personal styling appointments after a virtually “dead” January, Lafleur said.
The retailer, which took a financial hit in 2020, has been running ads on social media that lean into the workwear vocabulary du jour of “power casual” garb, with blazerlike cardigans, and others that proclaim, “Your leggings got a promotion.” Lafleur said the power casual portions of its site were generating triple the sales of those promoting more traditional dresses. Before the pandemic, dresses made up about one- third of the company’s sales, but that has dropped below 20%.
Retailers have to figure out what will make people happy at work — a tall order in a nation of confused employees — or at least try to convince them that leggings will help make their days better.
“It’s really the retailers responding to market demand,” Jung said. “Companies are reducing their products that are geared toward formal attire and business wear.”
Nordstrom, which has hundreds of full- price and Rack locations around the country, saw a 152% increase in searches on its website for the term “workwear” in February, said Shea Jensen, the retailer’s general merchandise manager for men’s and women’s apparel.
The site has used terms such as “workleisure” and has a section called “New Work Dress Codes.” From there, shoppers can navigate to “WFH Reset” for “video- call- approved styles.” There’s also “office ready,” which promises to “connect the dots between feel- good and professional.”
“We saw radical swings in work attire through COVID as people were dressing for the keyboard up, as we like to say, and now as they return to the office, there’s a really exciting enthusiasm about head- to- toe dressing again,” Jensen said.
So, what are people wearing? J. T. O’donnell, a former human- resources executive and founder of the career coaching platform Work It Daily, said she would not recommend that job applicants or recent graduates automatically buy interview suits these days. Although that may work for some industries, such as banking and consulting, she said, job candidates should research potential employers on social media to get a sense of how people at the company dress, then
“dress slightly higher than what their proclaimed style is.”
“It can be very easy to say right now that they’re lucky to even have me walk through the door, so I just don’t care about my appearance right now,” O’donnell said. But “you do want to not be wrinkly, have stuff tucked in, look like you made an effort.” She advises job hunters to wear clothing suitable for visiting their grandmothers.
Victoria Hitchcock, a stylist in the San Francisco Bay Area who also helps clients with personal branding and “lifestyle transformation,” said she had been seeing high- powered female clients return to suits, although they are pursuing more casual materials such as “silk crepe fabric,” flare legs and higher waists and sometimes pairing them with loafers or sneakers.
She said she had been fielding daily requests from executives to bridge the gap between “preCOVID norms and postCOVID ‘ woke’ expression.” In practice, that translates into graphic T- shirts, with phrases such as “Babes supporting babes” and “A founder — not a female founder,” paired with pantsuits or blazers.
After a two- year hiatus, men and women “want to have that kind of message that I’ve been gone, I’ve been away, I’ve been somewhat tuned out and working on myself and here I am,” Hitchcock said.