Companies spent years dragging employees back to the office, but forgot to tell them what to wear. The result is confusion stretching from junior employees to the executive suite.
One of Grant Alexander’s longtime clients is the COO of a big private company. He recently lamented that a few of his vice presidents had asked him what they should wear to an event.
“He looked at me, and he’s like, ‘When was the last time a VP had to ask the COO what they should be wearing for something?’” Alexander, the founder of Grant Alexander Studio, an executive image and styling consultancy, tells Fast Company. “A lot of the executives I work with have never talked to their employees about this.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, people still wore their office attire for the first few weeks. But as the lockdowns went on, smart trousers were replaced with sweatpants, and shirts were put away to make room for T-shirts and hoodies.
“Now there’s a gap between what people believe they should be wearing at the office, and what their wardrobe actually has become,” says Alexander. “So they’re just like, ‘I don’t know what I should be wearing right now’.”
The uncertainty is far reaching. A 2025 survey of 1,000 hybrid workers in the U.S. by International Workplace Group (IWG) found that workers reported feeling stressed or anxious about what to wear to the office around seven times a month. Almost half (46%) said this happened at least weekly, while 14% experienced it daily.
Zoom dressing is no longer an option
Samantha Harman, a former newspaper editor turned personal stylist, tells Fast Company that knowing what to wear to the office has always been complicated. But return to office (RTO) has made it even harder, with so much ambiguity around what’s expected.
For people whose work wardrobes have been neglected for the past few years, remembering and updating their personal style can be a daunting prospect.
“I am working with quite a few people who’ve got return to office mandates for the New Year, and they’re now looking at their wardrobe thinking, ‘I couldn’t go into the office like this’,” Harman says. “It’s all very well ‘top dressing,’ or Zoom dressing—where you are presenting yourself in a certain way on screen, but on the bottom you’ve got your pajamas on. But you can’t do that face-to-face.”
In one recent conversation, a manager told Harman that people either came to the office looking like they’d just rolled out of bed, or were so put together they could have been going to the opera. When she asked if he’d spoken to them about it, he replied: “Are you kidding? I don’t even know what the rules or the guidelines are.”
The problem is compounded by the fact that workplace dress codes haven’t always kept pace with changing expectations, Harman says. Companies continue to rely on generic terms such as “business casual” without explaining what they mean in practice.
The confusion also can add to workers’ mental load. Harman recently overheard two men debating whether or not an invitation specifying “smart casual” meant they needed to wear a tie. “You’re giving your employees more work to do,” she says.
Clarity is particularly important for juniors
Francesca O’Connor, cofounder of the workplace culture, leadership, and communications consultancy HappyHQ, tells Fast Company that leaders need to explain what dressing appropriately actually means for their specific organization. They also must distinguish between expectations for an ordinary office day and something that requires stepping it up, such as a client pitch.
“That doesn’t mean everyone needs to wear a suit,” she says. “It means having the judgment to understand your audience and what the situation calls for.”
This is particularly important for younger workers entering the office for the first time, who may have had little opportunity to observe traditional workplace style.
“If there’s an expectation that people dress differently for certain occasions, explain it,” O’Connor says. “Don’t leave them guessing, particularly when they’re starting out in their careers.”
In the IWG survey, 94% of Gen Z respondents said they wanted guidance on what to wear to work, compared with 84% of millennials, 70% of Gen X and 61% of baby boomers.
“Gen Z entering the workforce have no idea what to wear and nobody’s talking about it,” Alexander says. “So they’re just like, ‘OK, I have joggers. I’m just going to wear them.’ And it usually takes them getting yelled at and something happening and somebody correcting them.”
Guidelines can help build confidence
Beyond avoiding awkward conversations, clearer expectations could help employees feel more confident at work, Harman says.
“If you are wearing something that makes you feel really good, you will behave in a different way than if you’re wearing something that makes you feel a bit like a potato,” she says.
The best way for leaders to have this conversation with their employees is to get their buy-in, Harman adds, by asking what they actually love to wear and what makes them feel confident.
“Even if you just host some workshops or forums where you have people talking about this stuff, [it] can be really helpful,” Harman says. “People often tell me, ‘this is not ever something that we ever speak about at work, and yet it affects me every single day—because every single day, the one thing that I have to do is get dressed’.”
Alexander believes that focusing heavily on getting people back to the office without considering how they present themselves is shortsighted. It’s also easily fixed, he says, with a simple email or Slack update.
“You can say, ‘Hey, a few people have asked us lately about what we should wear.’ Nobody’s going to question it,” he says. “Executives can make it easier on the entire organization by just talking about it.”
That’s if the executives themselves know what protocol should be, of course.