All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Once upon a time, I used to fantasize about what it would be like to have my own office. I imagined how I would decorate it with contemporary furniture and decor that reflected my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ambition.
The way that offices and corporate culture were packaged and sold to me in movies and television shows has never matched my real-life experiences. Afterward, I told a friend how what I saw on the runway reminded me of exactly what a younger version of me thought I would be dressing like as a working woman in the corporate world.
This was what you wore to commiserate with your colleagues at happy hour after a long day on the job! This was the corporate fetish aesthetic before I was fully fluent in its business casual language. This was a manifestation of my delusional American dream—my office would never look like the fictional Mode , Composure, Poise, or Scarlet magazines, but at least I could play the part by dressing up for it in the real world. Charlotte Pickles would have lived, laughed, loved this era of corporate fetish couture.
What fascinates me most about this trend is how the design references are being pulled directly from the catalog pages of outdated office aesthetics. The following year, Bella Hadid would go on to star in a campaign for Balenciaga and Adidas that took place in a high-rise office. The SS23 collection originally debuted on the stock exchange floor.
At the same time, women have always been in information professions. From that point of view, the corporate fetish aesthetic seems to flirt with this idea of progressive women reclaiming—and dominating—their place in the office. After all, the best revenge is dressing well. Since then, many celebrity-fronted brands like SKKN concrete floors, plywood furniture, natural stone, and neutral tones and Rare Beauty warm tones, cozy textures, and soft lighting have loosely followed the Brutalism-for-beginners formula with greige or pastel-pink-tinted minimalism and cavernous lounge spaces filled with modular furniture on slabs of concrete.
