Only someone who has never truly experienced the existential dread that comes with holding down a soulless 9-to-5 would ever romanticize corporate life. And yet, this time last year, fashion influencers were doing just that. The “office siren” trend was all over TikTok and headlines in Vogue and InStyle. Sirens, we’re told, wore skintight pencil skirts, collared shirts unbuttoned to show ample cleavage, and maybe a pinstripe vest to tie it all together. It was corporate Barbie cosplay, with nods to a submissive Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary, or Betty Boop moonlighting as a call center employee.
Office sirens were celebrating returning to the office post-pandemic while signaling a secret freakiness (one channeled well by Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, in which she played a Lean In feminist CEO who enters into a kinky office romance with a much younger intern and can’t stop adjusting her blouse buttons).
