The average person spends about a third of their life at work. Which means that if your job doesn’t come with a prescribed uniform, that’s roughly 90,000 hours—10 whole calendar years—that 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. (Catch up, if you haven’t already, 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. Which is why we’ve called in back up 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.
1. Never wear anything with your company’s logo on it.
Do you really need every stranger on the subway to know where you’re employed? Do you really not have a better windbreaker or ballcap than the one you got for free at your onboarding session? You’re not a star high-school athlete and that hastily embroidered Patagonia vest is not a varsity jacket. There are better ways to build team culture.
2. That golf shirt is not a proper polo.
If it’s made of a sweat-wicking technical fabric and looks like it belongs on the fairway (where, quite frankly, you can also do better style-wise), it absolutely does not belong at the office. Especially not when there’s a wealth of top-notch actual polo shirts—both in knitted and pique form—out there for the taking.
3. Having a work uniform is great—as long as it’s properly dialed.
The desire to maximize your efficiency in the morning by simplifying your wardrobe choices is totally reasonable. What’s not OK, however, is if your chosen daily regalia feels thoughtless, sloppy, or just plain boring. “Everyone wants to be a uniform dresser like Steve Jobs,” says Byron, a sales executive at a major tech company, “but misses the part about his turtleneck being Issey.” You don’t have to call up one of the world’s greatest design minds, of course, to assemble your ideal everyday ensemble. You just need to give some real thought to who you are and the image you’re trying to project at the office, and then make sure your clothes reflect that as accurately as possible.
Click here to read the full list of 41 Dos and Don’ts for Getting Dressed for the Office.
