Words by Grace McBrierty

Photos by Kimberly K. Canales-Ascu

This story is brought to you by our partner, Coreprêt.

If clothes make the man, as the saying goes, then their power to instill self-confidence and harness respect surely extends to all people, without restriction. For today’s female-identifying workforce operating within a framework of capitalist motivation, the ethics of empowerment are bolstered by sartorial freedom and conscious consumption.

With every professional environment comes expectations of dress; some may be self-imposed, others subtly enforced, and others overtly expected.

Uniforms of varied sorts have served as career identifiers for years, providing both function and practicality for their intended industries. Among these, the fashion industry is unique; it exists within a global structure with little noticeable crossover when it comes to other non-creative fields, yet without it, required dress for countless job types would not exist.

One of the most common ‘uniforms’ produced by the fashion industry is corporate wear – traditional suiting adapted in affordable fabrics and off-the-rack fits offering broad and evolving consumer markets more accessible price tags. Applicable to men and women in varying iterations, corporate wear has aesthetically distinguished numerous workplaces for decades. 1950s office landscapes were host to an almost exclusively female administrative staff in waist-cinching skirts and bosom-hugging blouses, the clicking of high heels across the floor an audible definition of gender-traditional uniform.

The performance of such roles was imperative not only to interpersonal relations, but to smooth-running business. Yet when considering traditionally constrained gender roles imposed on workplaces of decades past, ‘performance’ is the operative word. While working men and women have long operated in tandem, seldom have role types and career ascension opportunities been offered equally between the sexes. This imbalance is also recognisable in modes of personal presentation. Where the traditional suit has offered men of varying builds an armour of function, comfort, utility and respect, women have been expected to squeeze themselves into an often uncomfortable, dysfunctional, one-size-fits-all aesthetic, unsupportive of physical diversity and often constructed for the visual benefit of their male colleagues.

Observing today’s corporate wear offerings, waistbands and blouses have loosened, high heels are often deemed optional, and the specificity of gendered garment types has broadened (note: trousers for all). This prompts the question: where on the spectrum of contemporary workwear are accommodations for those who don’t fit the standard yet outdated mould of ‘working woman’? While the answer may partially lie in the physical cut and style of the clothing itself, it also lies in our own understanding of where our clothes come from and who made them. It’s the confluence of these contributing factors which can offer the wearer both physical and emotional comfort, and allow for a broader exploration of what constitutes femininity through personal empowerment.

Openly feeling good about oneself may be considered a radical act in the modern corporate landscape, but it needn’t be. As societies have evolved, so too have ideas on beauty; we are aware that it cannot be defined or portrayed by a singular archetype universally. Nowadays, nor can femininity. So, what if this mentality was applied to fashion design and production? Can empowering women of the modern workforce to feel good about themselves through clothing actually make fashion more ethical?

Only in recent years has fashion documented and begun to celebrate realistic and progressive archetypes of women, professional or otherwise. So, where are those who wish to invest in clothing with an ethical and environmental conscience to go, and why is it that there are still such limited sartorial options for the vast majority who don’t fit the traditional mould of a physical aesthetic restrictive of uniqueness, or actively choose not to?

These questions are becoming part of a wider conversation among industry educators and incorporated into tertiary curricula throughout Australia. Alternatives to linear design, as well as transparency on fabric production and use, was paramount to Eve Maxwell, 2019 Textile Design graduate from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). In the development of her graduate collection, Maxwell used carefully selected and sourced fabrics to ensure low environmental impact and physical practicality. Materialising, literally, from a Mark Fisher quote – “It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” – Maxwell explored ways of visually representing wealth, class systems and the “climate apocalypse and transformation” through textile design. Speaking to societal rebirth through repurposed denim and silk, Maxwell weaved a collection of beauty and functionality, juxtaposing workwear and luxury in a statement of utility value over wasteful decoration.

Emerging designers like Maxwell may have a firmer grasp on what people actually want to wear and are motivated to buy because they’re designing for specific individuals rather than faceless trend report data and economic growth patterns. This is diametric when considering the trillions of dollars funnelled into the fashion industry – largely ultra-competitive and commercially mammoth brands – which help to produce multiple collections a year of clothes devoured by the masses and then disposed of at season’s end. But it’s this kind of tailor-made attention that has the potential to empower those who operate in professional environments structured under a male gaze.

The emotional politics of gendered workplace conduct is not, of course, solely grounded in attire, but feelings of ‘less than’ for women in professional environments remains evident today. A US study principally conducted by the psychology faculty at Cornell University examined the relationship between female confidence and competence in the workplace, discovering that while women harbour significantly more self-doubt in professional scenarios, competency levels were basically equal between the sexes. So, if women’s genetic composition has it in for them from the get-go, what measures are within grasp to feel more self-assured in the workplace to complement capable intellect? While clothing may seem an obvious suggestion for its ability to generate self-confidence in its wearer, it also has the power to expand the public conversation on why feelings of self-doubt and professional inequality arise.

Consider an open-plan office: often transparent walls separating private offices and conference rooms from the bustling hive of open-aired cubicles and shared work spaces. This is a familiar picture, and a structure which has catered positively to the social culture and logistics of myriad businesses for years. But these panoptic environments – whether it be a traditional corporate office, creative agency, broadcasting studio, laboratory, parliament, and many others – can also create a subconscious platform for peer critique, serving as an observation deck for those on the periphery. So where does that leave us if the clothing we’re expected to wear makes us feel uncomfortable before we’ve even walked into the office?

If our intellect and ambition is professional currency, clothing is arguably our social investment; if we don’t look the part then how can we succeed? In fact, we can, and this isn’t to say that clothing is the lynchpin in our ability to make effective professional decisions. But if our gender dictates our self-evaluated competency, then our self-confidence can surely impact our performance at work. Empowering our female-identifying community to be their most authentic selves in the workplace has the potential to result in better business. And while self-confidence is influenced by factors both external and internal to the individual, clothing fosters immense power when it comes to saying who you are.

As the industry evolves, so do the ways in which we purchase and obtain clothing, and our ability to harness empowerment through sartorial choice. The rise of luxury second-hand retailers, popularity of op-shops, clothing swap events and rental platforms is in direct response to the environmental impact of linear clothing production and overstock liquidation, as reported by Business of Fashion (BoF). In Mckinsey & Company and BoF’s 2019 State of Fashion Report, Co-Founder of fashion rental business Rent the Runway Jennifer Hyman was interviewed regarding consumer approach to these platforms. Asked how much her consumers care about value and to what extent it plays into their mindset, Hyman responded: “The average consumer cares about making smart choices ... no one is going to spend a few hundred dollars or few thousand dollars on an item that they’re only going to wear once or twice.” Perhaps not, but the psychology of only wanting to wear something once is problematic, and may be rooted in the fact that the clothes we’re told to want don’t fulfil our needs beyond being aesthetically on-trend.

While fast fashion is still big business, we’re seeing increasing opportunity to break away from ill-fitting, cheaply- and carelessly-made corporate wear in favour of clothing that has been made for individual bodies with unique aesthetic preferences. Emotional empowerment can’t be harnessed with clothing alone, nor is it one-size-fits-all. But however obvious a tool of self-expression, clothing is a valid, accessible and changeable springboard for empowerment in a professional landscape which remains imbalanced when it comes to gender equality.

Holly Banfield, independent practitioner and founder of Melbourne-based label HB Archive, agrees that women should feel empowered to disregard clothing that has been made thoughtlessly and for a one-dimensional idea of ‘woman’ for pieces that are made with care, love and a clean conscience. “Creating a smaller yet more curated wardrobe of pieces you can wear forever and absolutely adore is fun, and that’s what fashion should be,” says Banfield, who self-produces made-to-order HB Archive garments from ethically-sourced certified Fairtrade linen and Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) cotton canvas from her Fitzroy studio. “Creating stories – like wearable journals – with your clothes helps to create your identity, and being able to connect with the maker of your clothes directly and learn about the creation process is really refreshing.”

While aesthetic and price-point remain cornerstones of our spending framework, our purchasing barometers are adapting as we see designers transparently detail each stage of a garment’s composition in explanation and justification of its price tag. As this transparency gradually becomes more normal, how we determine a garment’s worth on an emotional level may also change. While clothing’s ability to assert social status may forever be part of our consumer motivation, it’s not reserved to a singular profession or income bracket. Similarly, our ability to connect emotionally with the clothing we buy is unique and is not necessarily restricted or influenced by socioeconomics. A wardrobe can act as a visual microscope for a person’s lived experiences; individual garments recount stories and become heirlooms to be passed on. Whether buying new or sourcing pre-loved, knowing where your clothing has come from and making conscious selections connects you not only to the community but also, potentially, yourself.

As we find ourselves at such a complex crossroads of seemingly limited and limitless choice, a less is more approach may be the most useful way to navigate and adapt to a changing industry and society. As young and emerging labels continue to produce curated garments tailored to different types of people with different physical requirements and for different environments, the conversation on larger industry evolvement is bound to grow. When and how quickly we don’t know, but the next generation of practitioners is working tirelessly to ensure it does.

Grace McBrierty is a freelance writer living in Naarm/Melbourne. She values full-sentence texting and is motivated by the vagaries of human interaction. Grace has most recently appeared in Lindsay and Jane.