Gone are the days when work meant isolated office cubicles, mandatory high heels and a suit-and-tie for all. We’re in a new era of work culture: one that’s thrown the sartorial rulebook out the window and has cancelled most of your meetings because they probably could’ve been an email instead.

This brave new work world can be liberating, but it’s also in flux. The pandemic completely rewrote professional expectations, leaving a giant question mark over appropriate 2020s office wear. Flexible and work-from-home arrangements summon a casual, contemporary vibe, but return-to-work mandates point to older ideas of pressed and polished professional attire.

Gen Zs (and soon-to-be Gen Alphas) entering the workforce for the first time find themselves wrestling with this transition, and have even come under fire in business media for reportedly being clueless on “corpcore” norms, rocking up to work in midriffs, miniskirts and athleisure items. But even for those who have been in the workforce for a decade or more, there’s uncertainty over what’s in and what’s out.

Photographer: Kaede James Takamoto. Model: Emma Attard at Vivien’s. Art direction and styling: Jo Walker, Evie Baker and Ella Witchell. Workwear thanks to St Agni. On-set assistance from Jess Kirsopp, Steph Vigilante and Katya Wachtel

For fashion designers, the subject is fertile ground. Workwear was a dominant theme at the autumn/winter shows in London, Paris, Milan and New York earlier this year. Chloe and Versace sent sculptural, power-shoulder blouses down the runway, while pencil skirts were omnipresent at Gucci, Givenchy, Calvin Klein and Fendi.

Workwear motifs showed up at Khaite, Miu Miu and Giorgio Armani too, but Stella McCartney was the trend’s posterchild, offering double-breasted suits, “corporate greys” and louche pinstripe trousers as part of her Laptop to Lapdance collection, shown in an open-space office in Paris. It’s corporate-chic aesthetics interpreted for beyond the nine-to-five.

Amid this merger-and-acquisition of the old guard and the new, casual and corporate, and on-duty with out-of-office looks, dressing for work in 2025 can be a tough job. Here we speak to designers, stylists, buyers, magazine editors and a fashion industry recruiter to find out the new rules of workwear.