Somewhere between the spring and fall 2024 seasons, Sandy Liang’s customer traded in her sheer lace babydoll dresses for matching skirt suits. It’s been a recurring question that fashion critics have posed of the coquettish downtown designer, especially after 2023 saw an explosion of her trademark bows, rosettes, and all things “girlhood”: Where does she go from here?
This season, Liang sent models down the runway dressed for the office, showing a variety of cubicle-friendly looks. It’s only natural that Liang would show growth, but her sartorial shift between collections encapsulates a much larger phenomenon. It seems that, lately, women’s fashion trends have laid bare socioeconomic expectations for how women are to lead their lives, under both patriarchy and capitalism. But are we in on the joke, or the butt of it?
The girlhood trend reined supreme in 2023. Lolita, The Virgin Suicides, Simone Rocha’s fantastical cake-like dresses, Molly Goddard’s cotton candy-esque tulle confections, and Liang’s penchant for girly appliqués were all par for the course. Tenderness reigned supreme; women were encouraged to embrace their femininity and sensitivity. But things went astray when silly trends like “girl math,” and “girl dinner” slid down the slippery slope of gender essentialism, women falling into self-infantilization, and glorifying patriarchal attitudes toward labor. “On the surface, [there was] a lot of content about reclaiming femininity, but that often can have insidious political undertones,” says Daisy Alioto, the CEO of Dirt Media.
However, with the fast, hot burn of the coquettish girlhood trend lending to a quick death, it was only a matter of time before another aesthetic came to take its place. Now, it seems that The Girl has grown into a member of the workforce. Or, at least, a highly stylistic, idealized version of one. The new trend has many names—“office siren,” “corpcore,” “corporate fetish”—but it’s all the same sexed-up office wear: skintight pencil skirts, button-downs that reveal cleavage aided by a push-up bra, and Bayonetta glasses. (Think Gisele Bündchen’s character in The Devil Wears Prada.)
At first it seemed like a digitally native trend, grabbing a foothold among young women on TikTok, many of whom had probably never worked in a corporate environment. But then it expanded beyond social media. Emily Sundberg, who writes the fashion business newsletter, Feed Me, and coined the term “corporate fetish,” first noticed the office siren emerge with Kim Kardashian’s Skims nipple bra ad, which placed the reality star in a retro, beige office—clunky desktop computer and all. Less than a month later, Kardashian also appeared in a GQ editorial in an office. This year, the brand The Elder Statesman and online luxury retailer SSENSE have also tapped the corporate aesthetic. Celebrities are in on the trend, too. Bella Hadid took the look for a spin in December 2023. Earlier this month, VIP guests at Dior’s fall 2024 show in Paris (including Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman, and Maisie Williams) all tried it out, donning low-cut vests with nothing underneath, or ultra-short skirt sets that would otherwise earn a call to HR.
Sundberg argues that the recent office-wear obsession may just be a further extension of the girlhood trend. “I think that the power suit can easily be the opposite side of the girlhood coin,” she says. “People fantasize about reclaiming a very heightened, specific version of childhood. That might be bows and being a little girl, or it might be seeing your dad go to work in a suit. Those might have the same weight in somebody’s mind, embodying a specific time in their life in a very uniformed way.”