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Workplace culture

Opinion

Tim Duggan Work columnist September 25, 2025 — 1.18pm

What should you wear to work? It’s one of those fraught questions that can weigh heavily on the mind of anyone who begins a new job, or is at the start of their career and has no idea what the usual dress code is.

I don’t blame you for not knowing either, as the way we dress for work has evolved markedly over the last few decades and varies wildly depending on where, how and what you do.

For most of the last century, heading to the office meant dressing up in formal clothing that was reserved especially for working hours. This peaked in the 1980s with power dressing like heavy suits, padded shoulders, boxy briefcases and dangerously high heels (plus dangerously high hair, of cour

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