You'd Better Work

A new crop of workwear brands, teamed with fashion’s return to elegance and tailoring, make corporate dressing a more enticing affair, finds Grace O’Neill

There was an undeniable shift at the A/W 2019 shows.

The standout collections — Celine, Givenchy, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and Rick Owens among them — had a common thread: refined and simplified clothing that focused on wearability. Tailoring was front and centre, sombre-hued suiting reigned supreme and statement pieces, such as they were, leaned towards subtle details (a slightly exaggerated shoulder or neatly elongated trousers). The entire season hints at a pared-back future for fashion, one in which streetstyle peacocking and grabby streetwear are passé, and clothes are made explicitly for the everyday woman.

In London, Victoria Beckham and Burberry made the case for tasteful, feminine wardrobes: pleated knee-length skirts, silk pussy-bow blouses, neck scarfs and leather boots cut just above the calf. “It’s an A to Z of a woman’s life,” Beckham said of the collection. “She’s a lady, but she’s not particularly ladylike.” The balancing act she’s referring to, between pragmatism and style, has long been touted as the working woman’s conundrum. So much has been written about navigating corporate fashion that it would be trite to talk about it if it weren’t for the recent crop of emerging designers plugging that exact market hole.