Can office clothes be cool?

Regards: Courtesy of the brand; Other: Getty Images

Style Points is a weekly column on how fashion intersects with the rest of the world.

In 1988, Working Girl's Tess McGill hid her "bod for sin" in oversized blazers and high-necked blouses. Since then, this classic idea of ​​workwear has persisted, despite the daily casual Friday mode of startup culture and the shifts in work (remote, hybrid, freelance) brought about by the pandemic. If you want to look well-dressed for a meeting, you're probably still wearing a blazer; in a more buttoned-up environment, it may be a suit.

"Work has transformed, but not the way we dress for work," says Shopé Delano, the brains behind ethical fashion brand Kind Regards. The new line is meant to serve what she calls "an emerging psychography of women who define themselves more in their thinking about work." The brand started as an open letter that went viral on Instagram. (According to Delano, it has been viewed, liked, shared and commented on over 100,000 times.) He lamented how we are supposed to monetize so many aspects of our lives under capitalism, with deleterious results, arguing that we are “on the side hustling our way through a mental health crisis. One commenter wrote, “Maybe I should unpack why this made me cry. Thank you."

The conversation paved the way for the creation of garments that Delano hopes will solve, if not the structural problems of work, some of the particular challenges...