Pencil skirt. Kitten heels. Tiny glasses. And a little dark edge. These are just some of the elements of one of the most enduring fashion trends of the past couple of years: the office siren. But we're not just seeing this twist on office norms in fashion: we're also seeing it in TV shows like Severance and Industry, and with musicians like The Dare and FKA Twigs. So what are people expressing by reimagining office fashions? Brittany is joined by NPR's Life Kit producer Margaret Cirino to discuss the "freakification" of office wear — its long lineage in fashion, and what office tensions this trend is speaking to right now.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guests in this episode?
A warning, this segment contains references to sexuality and sexual violence. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Today, I have a very special guest here with me. Yay. Margaret Serino. Welcome to It's Been a Minute. Hi, Brittany. Happy to be here. Happy to have you.
Okay. So Marge is my colleague over at Life Kit, but she's also one of the most fashionable people at the NPR New York Bureau. Oh, stop. I'm blushing. It's true, though. It's true. It's true. And she's often dressed in a style that's aptly called office siren. Yes. Yes.
Chapter 2: What is the 'office siren' fashion trend and how is it described?
I have been having a lot of fun with it, but I will admit to you, I've been making some questionable fashion and beauty choices. I over plucked my eyebrows. I'm six months out still working through that decision. So that's great. I also on Amazon ordered... Three pairs of fake glasses that I do wear.
As somebody who wore glasses literally to their wedding reception, I'm going to reserve my thoughts on that. But I'm sure they look amazing. I'm sure they look amazing. Okay. So we know that office siren is glasses. We know it's thin eyebrows. What else does it look like?
Okay, I want you to picture like a tight white button up, lots of hair gel, you know, like the hardest, tightest, slick back bun looks painful you've ever seen. Pencil skirts, little kitten heels. It's like a devil wears Prada, kind of like early internet culture feel to it, basically. I'm obsessed with it. Other people are too, though. It's really popular.
So I've been seeing that office siren thing going on in TikTok.
For shoes, a pointy kitten heel. Put your hair either up and a little undone or down and sleek. The most important part, a pair of rectangular glasses.
How to dress like an office siren without getting sent to HR.
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Chapter 3: Where is the office siren style appearing in popular culture?
I've definitely seen the trend. It's made the rounds. Yes. You know, I've also seen, though, that these kind of aesthetics have permeated into the rest of culture over the last few years. Like you see it on TV shows like Severance, Industry. You see it in music. You know, The Dare, who's a musician. He's kind of exclusively wearing like the skinny ties. Suits and skinny ties. FKA Twigs.
You know, she has a whole office themed music video for YouSexua that kind of went viral, basically.
And if they ask you, say you feel it But don't call it love, you're sexual
I want to make a distinction here. It's not just office wear. It's kind of like a play on office wear. People are having like a little bit of fun with it. It's an acknowledgement of these costumes, really, that we wear. And there's a subversion to it, you know.
So people are getting sexy and ravey with it and sometimes a little deranged take on office fashion, which I'm calling the freakification of office wear. Okay. I like that. Freakification. Yeah. Yeah. Like I've even seen office themed raves in the ether. Have you ever been to one? I've been to one that had an explicitly corporate dress code. I did deliver. Yeah.
But also like in any context, I'm seeing people wearing business wear to the club, even without that kind of explicit dress code. And in fashion, you know, this style, it's being shown on fall 2026 runway shows. So it's lasted a really long time when, you know, as we know, most trends these days, they don't really last that long.
Why do you think Office Siren has stuck around?
Yeah, so our workplaces have undergone really drastic changes in the past few years. And they're continuing to evolve in ways that might feel a little scary to some people. And I think that's really being reflected in our fashion and in our pop culture. So what drew you to this style? Okay, I will be honest with you. I originally was not thinking that hard about it.
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Chapter 4: What does the 'freakification' of office wear mean?
I was kind of just like, oh, all the other fashion girlies are wearing skinny glasses. Like, I need to go and buy some. But thinking deeper and sitting with it, I think this style has really stayed with me because it feels, Like alien. Like I've always kind of turned to fashion to create, you know, different versions of myself that are really outlandish or like wouldn't otherwise exist, basically.
Why do you say that version won't ever exist? Yeah, I've really never seen a pre-COVID workplace, so. Oh. Yeah, I feel a little unfamiliar with like the traditional quote unquote office norms and customs as they were. So I put on this costume and I'm kind of like, I'm living the fantasy.
Okay, so fashion famously happens in cycles. So where do we see this emphasis on business wear happening in the past? Like what's the lineage of this trend of kind of putting a spin on business wear?
I learned that office wear has kind of, it's been costumey from the very beginning. Oh. Yeah, I talked to journalist Avery Travelman about it. She's the host of the fashion history podcast, Articles of Interest. And here's what she told me.
always been a little bit of a farce in the rise of the white collar workplace. I mean, it got that name because wearing a white collar was so de rigueur for all the clerks who were coming to work in New York. And like men used to wear detachable collars. And I feel like we look at it now. We're like, that's weird. Why do they do that? But it obviously makes it so you can wear the shirt more often.
You only have to wash the collar. You could buy disposable collars. You could buy, like, white paper collars that you could just put on every day and, like, throw out at the end of the night.
Wait, hold on. So that's where the name white collar actually comes from, from this early 1800s fashion trend?
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Chapter 5: Why has the office siren trend lasted so long?
Yeah, apparently so. I also did not know this.
Okay, oh my gosh. I love the idea. Also, though, like, I love the idea of a detachable collar. Mm-hmm.
It's kind of Chippendales dancer. Very much so, yeah. And, you know, we saw cultural icons put their own spin on this in the 80s. Here's Avery again.
You know, you look at any, like, Robert Longo photograph or, like, the Talking Heads even. Like, it was kind of hip to be square.
Oh, I think that makes total sense. Like, when I think about iconic suits in the 80s, I think about, like she said, David Byrne of the Talking Heads, like, famous for wearing these big boxy suits that were really absurd-looking, but, you know, it totally matches his lyrics about the absurdity of modern life, or... or like Grace Jones nightclubbing.
The album cover where she's wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette and she's kind of giving like androgynous, I don't know, it feels like a really interesting play on gender. Yeah, people were really playing with it.
And honestly, I'm seeing that echoed a lot in modern day fashion too. You know, if you look at Chapel Roan for The Giver, she's in this, like, boxy, oversized suit that just feels so 80s to me. Or Dochi, too. You know, what she wore to the Grammys this year. Again, this, like, very masculine suit dress.
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Chapter 6: What is the historical lineage of office wear fashion?
Yeah.
Yeah. And the other time I think office wear was really big was in the late 2000s. You know what I mean? Right. I was too young for this, but maybe you remember.
Oh, do I remember? For the record, I didn't wear that much business wear in the club because I was busy wearing spandex, trying to be a hot girl. Like, I was trying to look like Carrie Hilson in Love in This Club video. But that style, that office wear style in the club was so rampant at the time that my friends and family sometimes made fun of me for not covering up enough.
not covering up enough, in the club. That makes me so sad. And you want to know something? I look back, I have no regrets, okay? Good. But back then, the club was full of blazers, full suits, pencil skirts, cardigans, blouses. It was a thing for men and for women.
I'm thinking about what was happening around then as well. As you probably know, millennials were entering the workforce, but during a recession.
Oh, yes. I finished college in 2009. I'm intimately familiar. Yeah, I mean, entering or... Not entering the workforce in my case.
Yeah, I would guess that had to play a part in why it was fashionable to wear like button downs and khakis and blazers to the club.
Oh, 100 percent. I mean, my friend John had this phrase at the time that we still use to this day, junior balling. He used it as a term to describe what it was like to get like your first scholarship. solid, full-time job. And junior balling was an achievement, okay? Because finding a full-time job at that time was really hard. Like, I finished college in 2009.
I didn't start junior balling until 2015, okay? Okay. Okay. So the idea of, like, this stable, secure office job felt kind of like a have those kinds of jobs. Well, they didn't have a lot of extra money lying around for a separate club wardrobe. So office wear was, in a way, kind of like the junior ball uniform.
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Chapter 7: How did the 1980s influence modern office wear fashion?
I think I need to steal that phrase because, yeah, honestly, that sounds like what a lot of me and my friends feel now.
I also want to point out that the idea of office wear in the club back in the day It wasn't just about like fantasy or, you know, tight recession era budgets. For starters, I mean, some clubs have dress codes, right? No jeans, sneakers or gang wear, that kind of stuff. But I think another key part of this also goes back to 2005 when the NBA instituted a dress code.
They previously did not have one that was like this. Long story short. After what is now called the malice at the palace, this huge fight that broke out on the court at a Pistons-Pacers game, the NBA commissioner decided that the league needed a dress code to help with its so-called image problems, let's say.
So players went from wearing casual wear like do-rags, jerseys, jeans, big chains, and sneakers to and from games, right? Right. to being required to wear business dress, like suits and ties.
Even though they had to follow these rules that some players definitely felt and expressed that they felt they were racially dubious, at the end of the day, ballplayers are still trendsetters and fans wanted to look like them. And so the fans started wearing suits too. Wow. Yeah, that's so interesting.
I didn't even know about this Malice at the Palace fight, but that makes a lot of sense.
Coming up, why office wear has come back in vogue and how it got freakified.
It's like a play on power that acknowledges that power's sex appeal and danger. Stick around.
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Chapter 8: How did the late 2000s recession impact office wear fashion in social settings?
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OK, so there's like a history of this, right? You know, some of which I remember myself. But now we're in, as you described, this freakification moment.
Yeah. So I talked to Kat Zhang. She's a culture writer at The Cut. And she previously wrote about this and said something that I keep thinking about.
The continued pairing of offices and then clubs, these like diametrically opposed spaces that nonetheless merge. The juxtaposition that they're playing with is like repression, liberation, or like the libidinal energy that you have to contain gets like released at the rave.
It's not just between repression and liberation. When the trend started, I think people were really dealing with return to office mandates after the pandemic, high inflation. People were feeling bad about the economy generally. It's now even more salient, you know, with economic instability due to tariffs and, you
Government threats around DEI programs or lost contracts or grants due to doge cuts. There's all these massive changes to the corporate world and fashion is really emotional. So it's not surprising to see people trying to embody nostalgia for a type of power that feels really out of reach at the moment. I talked to culture writer Amelia Petrarca about this. Here's what she told me.
When you are scrolling a resale site and you see a double-breasted suit with massive shoulders, I think you're attracted to it emotionally when you put it on and you feel powerful. It makes you feel like you're wearing what your dad wore, what your grandpa wore, and you feel like... You're taking it and making it your own, and that feels good.
Now, I understand that, but you're saying that it's also freakified, that it has, like, a kind of weird tinge.
Yeah, when I say freakified, I am thinking of this one scene in the You Sexual Music video when FKA Twigs is... like finally freed from the shackles of her office work, like corp core dystopian vibes. We pan out on her row of cubicles and she's on the ceiling of her office and she has this like incredible shaved, spiky, multi-directional haircut and is crawling and writhing around up there.
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