The ‘Office Siren’: Professionalism in Practice or Corporate Cosplay?
They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, right? For what feels like an eternity, the corporate world has been recycling the same age–old saying as golden career advice. It assures us that by putting enough effort into our appearance and exuding professionalism at all times—no matter where we stand on the corporate ladder—we move one step closer to obtaining our career goals. Through the rise of the “office siren” aesthetic, young women in corporate spaces are putting their own creative spin on the classic idea of “dressing for success.”
Like many of today’s microtrends and aesthetics, the “office siren” grew out of TikTok in fall 2023. The trend quickly gained popularity for turning basic corporate style on its head, reimagining traditional workwear pieces through a highly sophisticated, feminine, and alluring lens. The “office” portion of the trend's name comes from its grounding in typical corporate workwear pieces for women: blazers, tailored trousers, button–downs, pencil skirts, and heels. However, it is the “siren” portion that adds depth to it, bringing in a sense of bold femininity and subtle yet powerful sensuality.
The trend was inspired by a nostalgic longing for ‘90s and Y2K corporate–inspired fashion carried out by designers like Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, and Dolce and Gabbana. TikTok aesthetic pages even created mood boards and image slideshows of those they deemed pioneers of the office siren trend in the media, from supermodel Gisele Bündchen’s character Serena in The Devil Wears Prada to Jo Frost in Supernanny (2005–2020). With their pulled–back low buns, narrow glasses, and sleek corporate style, these figures embodied a proto–office siren aesthetic.
Over the years, we’ve seen several microtrends attempting to reshape professional style emerge and dissipate from online consciousness: It’s the circle of life. Long before the office siren, there was the “girlboss,” a phenomenon that developed during the mid–2010s that exalted the figure of the bright–eyed, ambitious, career–oriented woman working her way towards securing a seat at the male–dominated table. “Girlbosses” were driven leaders, thinkers, employees, and entrepreneurs, epitomizing female empowerment and success. With the “girlboss,” corporate power–dressing became saturated in “millenial pink,” a term coined by Veronique Hyland. From Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) in Legally Blonde to beauty company Glossier’s signature pink brand color, “millenial pink” went hand–in–hand with the girlboss, signifying that pink (not just any shade of pink), which often represented femininity, could be reclaimed and coexist with "boss" energy.
But the office siren remains unique among its predecessors and microtrend peers. Terms such as “corporate–core” and “corporate chic” have been thrown around social media fashion spaces recently, all of which reimagine women’s professional wear to some extent. But the office siren is distinct in its emphasis on subdued yet alluring sensuality, something especially powerful given the constant policing, surveillance, and hypersexualization that women have historically faced within corporate settings.
Throughout 2024, popular videos started to surface of women showing off their office siren–inspired Outfits of the Day, characterized by neutral color palettes and pinstripe patterns. Form–fitting trousers, tailored mini and pencil skirts, fitted blouses, corset tops, snatched blazers, pumps, kitten heels, and thin rectangular–framed Bayonetta glasses were among the essential clothing items and accessories that composed the aesthetic. Soon, “office siren” took over: Celebrities such as Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber were captured in Bayonetta glasses and tailored blazers, dubbed as icons of the aesthetic by fashion headlines. Prominent publications from Cosmopolitan to Refinery 29 have created stylized lookbooks on how to adopt the office siren look. Fashion campaigns have even been classified as giving off “office siren” vibes.
Naturally, as more women began dressing in the “office siren” aesthetic, blurring the boundaries between rigid dichotomies such as the professional and the playful and the sensual and the modest, the trend quickly became a breeding ground for extensive public debate. This debate was particularly strong among female employees themselves. The office siren quickly went from a simple trend taking over TikTok for–you pages to a catalyst for widespread conversations surrounding what women should (or should not) wear in the office.
The biggest point of contention was that office siren outfits were simply inappropriate for any real workplace environment. Critics argued that women showing up to their corporate jobs in too–short tailored mini skirts, low–cut corset tops, and strapless tube tops without blazers over them were practically rolling out the red carpet for human resources violations and ultimately, unemployment altogether. Some who tried to dress like office sirens at their actual jobs reported back to TikTok that they had been fired (whether these stories are true or not remains unknown).
Anxieties that fixate on what women wear in the workplace are nothing new. While we as a society have been conditioned to believe that corporate “professionalism” is a universal dress code, it often disproportionately targets women, especially women of color, and perpetuates outdated ideals.
Above all, those against the office siren trend claim that office siren adherents—primarily Gen Z women—are promoting a glamorized, even fetishized notion of workplace attire. They argue that adherents have likely never truly worked in a corporate setting—that professionalism seemed to be becoming lost in the shuffle of theatricality and office cosplay. This “romanticization” of the 9–to–5 comes at a time when fatigue from remote, isolated work caused by the pandemic and fears of mass layoffs are becoming increasingly prominent. Younger employees are eager to finally enter physical office spaces and participate in the corporate American lives that they were promised, and dressing the part is important.
Discourse surrounding the office siren trend often revolves around the idealization of workplace culture and whether or not it is contributing to the exact female objectification that we ought to reject. But maybe we are looking at the office siren trend in the wrong way. After all, if we truly mean it when we say “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” then isn’t the office siren trend doing exactly that? Perhaps, at its core, the office siren trend is simply about Gen Z women trying to find their place as the newest, most eager members of the workforce. The office siren trend allows for young, excited professional women to channel self—expression, individuality, and above all, self—empowerment, both in and out of the cubicle.
Over the course of many decades, women’s workplace attire has undergone a series of ebbs and flows. But although guidelines surrounding what is appropriate for women to wear in professional settings have shifted, women have always used officewear as a means to both resist gender–based oppression in the workplace and express their own identities.
In the early 20th century, the majority of women in the United States “did not work outside of the home, and those who did were primarily young and unmarried.” Between the 1930s and ‘70s, there was an increase in women, particularly married women, entering the workforce, boosting women’s contributions to the economy. As the number of working women began to shift, so too did women’s workplace attire. The 1970s marked a particularly critical turning point in fashion: In a decade grounded in feminism, women were not only leading movements to promote equal rights in the workplace, but also demanding more control over their office wardrobes. While dress codes and consequences for breaking them remained strict during the early half the ‘70s, feminist women strayed away from wearing super feminine attire to reject gender norms; in the latter half, they prioritized self–expression and individuality through fashion, wearing what they wanted.
The 1980s ushered in an era of power dressing: Women often donned power suits to the office, typically consisting of vibrantly colored boxy blazers with sharp shoulder pads, blouses and matching tailored trousers and midi skirts that symbolized female empowerment, drive, and ambition within the workplace. In the ‘90s and 2000s, although shoulder pads went out of style and dramatic power suits were swapped out for more subdued, chic corporate wear (which would go on to influence the office siren trend), the same principles of empowerment and authority in the workplace applied. Needless to say, dress codes surrounding men’s work wardrobe choices remained relatively stagnant: For men, the rules are simply different, and double standards run rampant.
So, for decades, women have been taking the slogan of “dressing for the job you want” and making it their own, experimenting with corporate fashion as a way of defying strict gendered fashion norms and expressing themselves. The office siren trend is merely the latest iteration of this phenomenon. Gen Z (1997–2012) are the newest members of the workforce, and many of them are still relatively inexperienced and struggling when it comes to navigating corporate spaces. By extension, office attire becomes a point of difficulty, as Gen Z workers feel caught between a rock and a hard place: they have to choose between conforming their wardrobes to the whims of their older employers or maintaining a sense of authenticity, individuality, and personal style. Gen Z is known to reject strict gender norms and uniformity, and is focused on “radically re–imagining their lives—both in their careers and otherwise.”
But for Gen Z women in particular, the workplace remains an especially challenging space. While already grappling with gender biases, youngism, a type of age bias that stereotypes and discriminates against younger people, adds fuel to the fire. Because of youngism's prominence in work environments, Gen Z women within the corporate world are often dismissed as immature.
Despite all of this, at the end of the day, research shows that young women are eager and ambitious when it comes to their careers. In a working world that still struggles to properly accommodate women, let alone Gen Z women, turning to corporate fashion to exercise creativity and autonomy makes sense.
Sure, there is a time and place for everything. Dress codes still exist, and professionalism is not an unreasonable expectation for a workplace setting. But,whether corporate or not, fashion is meant to be expressive. If women have always been reinventing corporate fashion over the decades, then is the office siren trend not simply Gen Z’s version of a storied phenomenon? Those who try to embody the office siren aesthetic are, like the women that came before them, trying to find self–empowerment in a corporate world that strictly polices what women can and cannot do or can and cannot be. So if the “office siren” is a form of “corporate cosplay” or “adult dress–up,” then it is perhaps creating a world where young women can (finally) freely express themselves and their individuality in the workplace.
