Gen Z women are leaning into office-inspired clothing — but they're not wearing it to the office

• Gen Z women are leaning into the "office siren" aesthetic, a sexified business-professional look.
• They're taking it beyond the office: Work-inspired clothing has made it into street fashion.
• In the work-from-anywhere age, the boundaries between work and play are blurring.

At first, Julia Quang posted her workwear outfits because she had nothing else to share.

As a fashion influencer, 23-year-old Quang had built her audience by posting outfit-of-the-day videos on TikTok, usually modeling casual womenswear trends.

But when she landed a sales job and began spending most of her days in the office, she found herself with no time to post her typical fashion content.

So, she started posting the outfits she was already wearing to work.

To her surprise, her workwear outfits took off. Two of her videos, both featuring a variation of a form-fitting button-down top and low-rise trousers, garnered more than 1 million views each. Her following ballooned from 15,000 to 100,000 followers, and brand deals began pouring in.

After five months in her corporate job, she was making more money as a part-time influencer than she was as a full-time sales rep. She quit her job to do influencing full time and now makes about 1.5 times her old salary.

Quang attributes the unexpected virality to a digital trend that first appeared at the end of 2023: the office siren.

Online interest in the style skyrocketed this summer. Videos on TikTok tagged #officesiren collectively have tens of millions of views.

Google Trends shows searches for the term "office siren" increased tenfold between the first week of May and the first week of August. Brands are catching on, too. Canadian retailer Aritzia launched its fall 2024 workwear-inspired collection with the tagline, "CCing office sirens."

The office siren is a polarizing character — a sexed-up appropriation of office wear, restyled and applied to contexts outside the office.

Think vests that you'd see in a three-piece suit but cropped and fitted and worn without a shirt underneath or pinstripes splashed across micro-mini skirts and tube tops.

Quang's influence demonstrates a curious trend among working Gen Zers in America.

Many of these young people began careers during the remote work boom of the pandemic years and continue to work in hybrid or remote settings. During this time, dress codes in many corporate spaces got more relaxed, welcoming jeans, T-shirts, and in some cases, athleisure.

Although more workplaces have embraced casual dress codes in recent years, young people are embracing corporate fashion in places that aren't meant for this kind of clothing at all.

BI spoke with three industry experts who explained why office-inspired clothing is booming, even amid less crowded offices and more relaxed at-work dress codes.

They pointed to a few key factors driving young people's embrace of corporate fashion: the prevalence of remote work, the demise of the dress code, and the ultimate blurring of our professional and personal lives.

Reclaiming adulthood

Quang, who quit her corporate job in April, continues to post office-siren content, although she no longer has to get dressed to go into work. She described her new aesthetic as the "office siren, without the dress code" — a pastiche of corporate culture that doesn't exist in real life.

Josephine Hansom, a youth-trends analyst at the market research firm Savanta, said that young people could be embracing corporate core as a way of asserting their maturity.

"Young people are trying to reclaim their pathway to adulthood, which isn't necessarily being offered to them," Hansom said. "This generation is finding it quite hard to know where they fit because the life milestones associated with becoming an adult are so far off."

Gen Z faces significant financial hurdles, like unprecedented housing unaffordability and mounting student debt, factors that push many of them to live with their parents for longer.

And given that members of Gen Z are more likely than older generations to perceive themselves as financially worse off than they are, it's no surprise they may want to assert what little claims to adulthood they may have using clothes.

Dress codes' demise

Kirsten Classi-Zummo, an apparel industry analyst at Circana, said the end of the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the blurring of dress codes.

Events came back in full force. Suddenly inundated with places to be and people to see, plus the demands of some return-to-office orders, young people sought out clothing that could easily transition between contexts.

Classi-Zummo said she's noticed young shoppers buying a lot of suits, skirts, and blazers. These pieces have a specific versatility: They can be worn to the office, out to dinner, and elsewhere.

She said the fluidity of the same clothes to move through different social spaces is a recent development.

"Ten, 15 years ago, we had completely separate wardrobes. For work, for working out, for going out, you bought separate pieces," Classi-Zummo said. "Now … everything has kind of met in the middle."

Corey Robinson, the chief product officer of Abercrombie & Fitch, cited the versatility of tailored pieces as a main factor in their popularity.

"Tailored clothing is not only great for the uptick in demand for wear-to-work, it's also a trend that is versatile for work to happy hour to weekend," Robinson said.

That versatility isn't done by accident. Aritzia, a retailer Quang described as her go-to for office-inspired clothing, intentionally blurs the line between casual and professional clothing, according to its executive VP of product Heather McLean.

"We often blend elevated professional pieces with more casual items, and this effortless, sophisticated approach resonates with our community across all ages," McLean said.

Playing the professional

Work creeps into other spaces — the coffee shop, your home, even the beach when you're supposed to be on vacation.

Perhaps what we're observing with the trickling of office attire into other spaces is just a reflection of how increasingly blurred our personal and professional lives have become.

To be sure, this isn't the first time we've seen business clothing make it out of the office and onto the street.

In the 1970s, people embraced polos, collared shirts, and button-downs for day-to-day wear, leaning away from the baggy and boho chic of the previous decade, Nancy Deihl, a fashion historian at New York University, said.

Hansom added that business-casual structured vests and ties even made their way into clubbing outfits of the 2000s — an era of fashion Quang said was a huge inspiration point for the corporate-siren trend.

But the big difference between those earlier shifts and now is that Gen Z is online in almost every aspect of their lives: dating, socializing, and work.

And with remote and hybrid work here to stay, Gen Z is left play-acting at adulthood, as its typical markers have slipped further out of reach.

After all, Quang said, the ideal office siren isn't a real person — she's an idea. And the people commenting on her videos that she'd "get sent to HR" if she wore these outfits to work are missing the point.

"Obviously, I'm not wearing this to the office," Quang said. "The office siren is just a character I'm playing."