Klara Klarowicz broke out her favorite dress for her first day back at the office last month: a navy blue, three-quarter-sleeve number she purchased in Poland that hadn’t seen the light of day in a year.
It’s like a good-luck charm, she says. The moment she got her return-to-work date, she knew she’d wear it for her long-awaited return to in-person work.
“I enjoy wearing business clothes,” says Ms. Klarowicz, a 25-year-old investment associate at LDC, a private-equity firm in London. Even though she’s only going in once a week, she’s thrilled to swap out the Lululemon leggings that had become her de facto uniform for remote work.
Omnipresent sweatpants and spandex marked the early stages of quarantine, but many workers returning to the office now, like Ms. Klarowicz, can’t wait to say good riddance and dress up like old times for work again.
“Honestly it’s been really fun to rediscover my closet. It’s almost like a brand-new closet again,” says Paula Nichols, a 27-year-old project manager at a land-development company in Arlington, Texas.
Ms. Nichols has been wearing a lot of blazers recently, which she says suits the Dallas area’s spring weather well.
Photo: Paula Nichols“Sometimes I even kind of overdress for work because it makes me feel better,” she says. March 17 marked her first day back in the office. “It makes me feel suitable, competent and equipped.”
She says she’s been wearing more blazers recently, which makes her feel like a “boss lady” and helps with the weather in the Dallas area, which can be cool in the morning and hot later in the day.
Ms. Nichols got into the habit of wearing shorts on Zoom calls last year because no one would see her bottom half. It was convenient, but not ideal for her productivity or performance. “Some people thrive rolling out of bed, but it just didn’t feel like work to me,” she says. “Now I feel like I’ve gotten back to being me.”
For some, dressing up again is not just business-formal as usual. Jeffery Adler, 52-year-old CEO of a video-learning platform for hospitals, is thrilled to get dressed for work now, but also feels like the pandemic gave him permission to dress in a more casual way that aligns with his company culture.
Jeffery Adler says wearing dress shoes again on his business trips can be somewhat painful.
Photo: Gilda Adler PhotographyFor his occasional business trips since October to meet with clients, Mr. Adler, who’s based in La Jolla, Calif., has mixed it up in terms of formality, from button-down sweaters to a Hugo Boss suit.
One of his favorite places to shop is Saks Off 5th, a discount subsidiary of Saks Fifth Avenue. He expects to drop $3,000 to $4,000 there this spring to refresh his wardrobe. He’s on the hunt for a more comfortable pair of shoes. “Wearing Dolce & Gabbana dress shoes to walk around a hospital for two hours, I realized…it hurts,” he says.
Silicon Valley, ground zero for many of the corporate world’s dominant casual trends, from hoodies to fleece vests, remains more on the informal side today—though not necessarily at a lower price point.
“I do have a few clients that are totally sick of the comfy look and can’t wait to dress up again, but most of my clients want to come out of this pandemic with a more relaxed professional style,” says Jackie Conlin, a style consultant in San Francisco.
Her recommendations typically include upscale brands like Loeffler Randall, Frame denim and Nili Lotan. And although sneakers are highly in demand among her Bay Area clients, especially millennials, they are typically high-end ones like Golden Goose—which retail for around $500—for work settings.
Specific occupations can have different expectations for flexible dress codes, says Katherine Karl, a management professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“The tech industry is well known for its relaxed clothing, whereas there still tends to be a high degree of formality in occupations such as finance or law. Many public-sector positions have uniforms (like police and firefighters), so they have less discretion in what to wear,” she says.
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“Blue-collar jobs can be even more restrictive than white-collar jobs,” says Janet Ainsworth, a law professor at Seattle University. “If you look at the way women who work in restaurants, casinos, etc., have to dress, it’s sometimes the most restrictive, and most expensive, kinds of work outfits.”
“I think there has been, to some degree, a loosening of that during the pandemic,” she adds. “Bosses have realized that work can get done in a variety of ways and formats and it will be hard to persuade workers that a very specific way to dress is a reasonable burden.”
Today, some workers plan to do some in-person shopping to prepare for in-person work, another change after a year of booming e-commerce. Harshit Patel, a business process analyst at an insurance company in Bethlehem, Pa., plans to go to the local mall before his office reopens this summer to refresh his wardrobe. His office culture tends more toward dress shirts than full suits, but he says even that level of dressing up seems appealing.
“Sweatpants were uniquely comfortable and ideal for the pandemic’s working-from-home environment, but I don’t think I will have a hard time giving them up,” he says.
Mr. Patel plans to drop by the mall to refresh his wardrobe before his office reopens this summer.
Photo: Harshit PatelA Wells Fargo Securities survey of 1,000 American consumers published in March found that the product categories that respondents were most likely to buy again after the pandemic were makeup and beauty (40% of all respondents) and going-out apparel (37%), according to senior analyst Ike Boruchow. Mr. Boruchow also forecasts that the athleisure sector will grow more slowly in 2021 than in 2020.
The most popular items on sale now at M.M. LaFleur, a womenswear startup known for tailored items, reflect a hybrid workplace where people might be in and out of the office, says Sarah LaFleur, the label’s New York-based founder. Dresses are flying off the digital shelves and knitwear went from 16% to 25% of their sales between the first quarters of 2019 and 2021, she says.
And the company has recently added some bold items like an off-the-shoulder silk jersey top, which she says reflects how women will be more comfortable standing out in the workplace after the pandemic. “A style like that is less sacrilegious now than before,” she says.
Slightly less-formal styles might prove popular for anyone going back to work this year, because bringing back structured work clothes is not without its hiccups.
“I’m sad to confess that on my first business trip last year, my suit didn’t really fit,” says Mr. Adler, the California CEO.
“A few too many pretzels and potato chips in quarantine. But even then, it felt great to wear it out again.”
Write to Krithika Varagur at krithika.varagur@wsj.com
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