How to expand your style in the workplace

Dressing like an adult, how to be more open towards fashion, and why you shouldn’t say goodbye to your clothes.

A reader reached out to me recently with the following question — “I feel I need to start dressing like an adult, or I have to say goodbye to clothes I thought were cool when I was younger, how do I go about doing that?” —and it really got me thinking. We all go through a moment in our journey where we feel the need to start dressing our age, but what does that even mean?

Just some of the great garments you’ll be able to explore in today’s article!

Today’s newsletter is the beginning of a larger conversation that aims to expand the part of our brain that we exercise when making our fashion decisions. We’ll take a look at dressing our age as a concept, how to be more open when wanting to try something new, and why you shouldn’t say goodbye to your clothes that were cool when you were younger.

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Wanting to dress like an adult vs knowing how to dress like an adult are two different conversations. It’s also something that you can ramble on about forever because this topic can easily mesh into other discussions and everyone has their own opinion on stuff, so it’s kind of endless. For this specific newsletter, let’s use the workplace as a base for our conversation on how we can start dressing like an adult. Whenever I hear that phrase I instantly think about trousers, long coats, shirts, oxfords, and so on — but those aren’t the only pieces you should be considering.

The concept of dressing like an adult is funny to me because I don’t really know what that means anymore. I’ve gone through many situations, mostly at various jobs, where I felt the need to adjust my style to fit in within the corporate boundaries. Through trial and error, I ended up finding a common ground that helped me mesh my everyday style with my working style. This is when I truly started to feel comfortable with the way I dress — a task you have to do on your own to truly understand what I’m talking about.

Let’s say you don’t want to start by taking bold risks but you still want to dress better and more mature in a certain way. What I suggest doing is taking a look at your existing closet, specifically the pieces you love the most that you wear to work, and then try to find similar pieces that are of higher quality. Yeah, it’s going to be a bit more pricey, but that quality difference will affect how you carry yourself. Wearing that elevated version of an already familiar piece will not only help you ease into that garment faster, but it will also give you that “I’m put-together, which should mean I must have my sh*t together, so I guess I can call myself a functional adult in society now…?” type of vibe.

Let’s say you are willing to take a risk or two, you don’t know where to look, but you want that put-together vibe that will convince your parents that you have it all under control, then I got you. I’ve put together a few looks to get the ideas flowing, but ultimately it’s up to you on how you wear those items. Consider these elevated looks that you can feel comfortable at to work in, and enjoy the same outfit when you’re out with your friends. You’ll also be able to shop all of the individual pieces shown in today’s outfits — with some even being marked down thanks to the ongoing sales from the holiday season!

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Going from left to right — For the first outfit, I decided to go with a simple contrast stitch jacket from James Coward, a pair of climbing pants from Engineered Garments, and to tie it all together I chose some grained calfskin leather shoes from Paraboot x Arpenteur. If you’re ever stuck and need to look more presentable, then you can’t go wrong with a pair of nice leather shoes. For the contents underneath the jacket, that’s all up to you. Wear a button-down, or just a simple white tee will work here.