What to Wear to Work

Having recently moved desks (and groups, coincidentally) at the new office, I'm now on the long arm of the L, which is readily populated by a decent proportion of other females, and from my desk I can see people going to and from the kitchen. This means I am now qualified to let you all know what the professional London female is wearing this fall!

Let's start at the top and work our way down!
So tops. The conservative choice is certainly the blouse, and most days I wear one myself. In fact, I'm wearing a blouse today. It's dark blue. Anyways, the blouses I see around vary widely in color and somewhat in style, certainly more so than the male counterpart of 'should I wear a blue shirt or a white shirt today'. Oh, and the blouse is tucked in. The popular alternative to the blouse is the solid-color sweater, sometimes over blouses or as a layering piece, but often on their own. They can be v-neck or scoop neck (you don't tend to see crew neck outside of cardigans), and are conservatively cut. You do not see t-shirts.

Bottoms! The younger people tend to be, the more likely they are to wear skirts (from my estimation!). Personally, aside from a couple days where I wore jeans for site visit purposes, I haven't worn pants to work since around July. Nice pants are also a popular choice, I've just decided they're a bit boring! The range of skirts is quite considerable, but the staple is still the knee-length black skirt. Most skirts tend to be solid-colored, but you do find some with prints amongst the slightly flower child crowd. Somewhere in between the top and the bottom falls the dress. While you see a few very conservative suit-type dresses around, it's more common to see somewhat less formal dresses, often accompanied by a sweater. They tend to be less formal than other work outfits, so I tend to wear them on Fridays. We don't have a casual day, but in my mind it's just a bit less formal.

Lower still...In my estimation the primary advantage of wearing skirts instead of pants is that you get to wear tights! Now sometimes tights drive me slightly insane, like when you're walking outside and they're slowly slipping down and there's no PC way to address the problem. However, popular yet again this year in London is the opaque tight. While black is again the staple, you are seeing more range in color this year. Also back in lesser esteem is the fashion tight, which are typically black and patterned in some way. My new acquisitions for the year include heather grey tights and some eggplanty-purple tights (and I got shoes in the same color, go me!). In the office, I've seen a lot of brown tights being worn with brown skirts, which is something I'm secretly aspiring to.

Shoes! Boot season has most certainly arrived! They come in black or brown and are generally either flat or have a very low heel. In pumps, thick heels are in! And they tend to be black as well. As with my eggplant shoe/tight situation (which I have worn together once!) you do see some tight/shoe matching. In addition to black, brown and eggplant, this is perhaps most commonly seen in shades of grey.

So there you have it, what to wear to work this fall. As for men, same standards apply: blue or white shirt, grey pants, black shoes. Perhaps a sweater if it's cold!