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Flashback: How FASHION has looked at work

By Jennifer Campbell

“Dress for success.” This ’70s edict from writer John T. Molloy sent legions of the new working woman to the office in navy skirt suits and floppy-tied blouses. It was a man’s world, and femininity was best left out of the boardroom. Antithetical to the concept of the office clone was Liz Claiborne, who unveiled her line of imaginative but still professional separates in 1976. The two looks have been duking it out in our closets ever since.

If we complained in Spring 1988 that “fear of femininity should have once been all but a prerequisite for a clamber up the corporate ladder,” there wasn’t much change in the mid-’90s, when jackets were so boxy and the pants so full cut that the models looked as if they were hiding. By September 2001, things tightened up a tad — the close-cut herringbone suit wasn’t afraid to show off, and the boots certainly weren’t afraid to step on a few toes.

These days, as Pink Tartan designer Kim Newport-Mimran put it in September 2006, “it’s just how you put it all together.” The question is, just how much mix can you get away with? In that same story, Susan Barrett took the edge off a black closet with a signature red handbag. Years earlier, in 1984, broadcaster Jan Tennant balanced out the rigidity of her on-camera look by sporting Nikes under the news desk. In the end, no woman wants to look like a suit, even if she’s wearing one.

First published in FASHION Magazine September 2007

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