Culottes? Yes. Crop Tops? No. What to Wear to the Office.

Everett Collection

Last Sunday’s final-season premiere of Mad Men wasn’t the first episode with a tense Peggy/Joan elevator scene touching on sexism—but it still was a doozy.The two had just come out of a pitch meeting—for Topaz pantyhose, to rival 1969’s runaway hit L'eggs that came in a plastic eggshell—where three chauvinist-pig male execs had made leering remarks to Joan, humiliating and infuriating her.

She says as much in the elevator after to a buttoned-up Peggy, who replies, “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t dress the way you do and expect…” Joan angrily cuts her off: “How do I dress?” (Truth be told, Joan’s stylish fuschia collared jacket in that scene was perfectly office-appropriate.)

Thankfully, workplace gender politics have come a long way since 1970. Offices are not quite as male-dominated as they once were, and now we actually have a term—sexual harassment—to apply to the kind of treatment that Peggy and Joan routinely absorb. Remarks toward full-chested Joan can seem particularly cruel. “She can’t help what nature gave her,” says Anne Slowey, Elle’s fashion news director. “Voluptuous women are going to be sexy unless they wear a muumuu—and we don’t want to promote muumuus.”

But even set 45 years ago, the scene rang all too true for many women (and even some men) who’ve been told on the job that their outfits were inappropriate—or who’ve had to deliver that message to an underling or a friend or colleague.

“At this one job, I had this guy who stared at my chest every day,” recalls Amina Akhtar, now an editor at The Fashion Spot. “I mean, look, I have ample bosoms, but whatever—it’s a workplace! When I finally complained about it to my boss, I was told, ‘Too bad, you asked for it, dressed the way you do.’ I’d wear tank tops—under a blazer. As a busty woman, if I want to look good and not fat, I have to show a little skin.”

Akhtar says she had no retort. “I was too shocked to say anything,” she says. “I cover up more now.” And, in the ensuing years, she’s had to do her own share of gentle reprimanding. “Interns always dress inappropriately when they start. We had to send one home once because she was in a bra and a jacket. Just because it’s in a fashion spread doesn’t mean it’s office-appropriate.”

But sometimes, especially in fashion settings, criticism isn’t about dressing too provocatively but about not dressing up enough. Erin, 30, who works in fashion media in New York, says she once had a boss like that. “I’d wear Top Shop, Zara, J. Crew, and he was very critical of me for not wearing head-to-toe designer clothes. Once I was very excited to be wearing a new pair of Prouenza Schouler heels and he laughed at me and said, ‘Oh my God, you got those at a sample, sale, didn’t you? I was so embarrassed. He’d also make comments about my weight. And I’d have nothing to say back to him. It’s 100-percent a kind of harassment, but I think it’s really common in an industry that’s surrounded by fashion images all day.”

Also awkward for Erin was another job, where “someone really high up who I worked for dressed very inappropriately—very revealing sexy, super tight, midriff-baring clothes. The founders repeatedly suggested a stylist to her, or that she be part of a makeover story, but nothing worked.” The woman was eventually let go, says Erin—not primarily, but perhaps partly, because of her workplace style.

Slowey feels that everyone should loosen up, especially as far as fashion offices go. “I was drawn to fashion because of the freedom of expression,” she says. “At Elle, we had a guy wearing Sergeant Pepper jackets and pumps, and I was delighted by it. The only thing that bothers me is conformity and status quo.”

But Tyler McCall, senior associate editor at Fashionista, feels that some lines must be drawn. “You can get away with a lot working in fashion,” she says, “but at one job, we shared our offices with non-fashion sites, where the people commented that one of our interns was dressing very distractingly, wearing a lot of crop tops and really short dresses. We had to tell her, 'Hey, we’re pretty laid-back, but you might want to adjust your wardrobe slightly.” The intern started covering up a bit more.

So what are the do’s and dont’s? There are no hard and fast ones–it depends on your workplace’s own rules, or—absent that—its tone (corporate law firm or funky website?) as well as its gender ratio and the region of the country. But generally speaking, says Anh Sundstrom, who does the Bay Area-based blog 9 to 5 Chic, “the biggest mistake I see is fit. Women sometimes are afraid to buy a size larger, but the most expensive and elegant clothes graze your body—they don’t hug it. Invest in tailoring.”

Trendy crop tops are right now—Kendall Jenner just caused a small scandal by wearing one to Easter Mass—but they’re forbidden in the office, says Aliza Licht, a longtime Donna Karan PR exec and author of Leave Your Mark, a social-media-era career how-to coming out May 5. “We’ve seen them all over the runway, but they’re not for work,” she says.

Nor, she adds, are fishnet stockings (unless the weave is tiny), flip-flops or anything strapless. In summer, she says, think about skirt-blouse sets, tailored knee-length shorts, and culottes.

Overall, says Licht, your competence should upstage your wardrobe. “You want the most notable thing about you at work to be what you’re saying, not your clothes,” she says.

Of course, workwear appropriateness is usually more of an issue for women than men, but that’s not to say men don’t come in for on-the-job style takedowns sometimes. In New York, Abiezer Benitez, cofounder of the popular Gayletter website, recalls how he once wore tight-fitting gray APC pants to his job in a high-end carpet store.

“My boss said they were strange and asked me if they were women’s pants,” he says. “I said to her, 'You’ve worked in fashion. You’ve probably seen lots of gay men in nice clothes.’”

That shut her down, says Benitez. “I think she was just jealous because my ass looked so good in them.”

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