Hooray for the weather change… but what to wear to work?

Posted by admin, July-8-2010

Hooray for the weather change. If only to provide a new angle for my awkward silence-filling office lift small talk. After two weeks: ‘Phew, hot outside isn’t it?’ was getting a bit old. Now I can quip ‘Phew, not so hot outside anymore is it?’ before the lift doors sigh open at my floor. Though that’s not the only reason I’m thankful for the dip in temperature. I cannot dress for work when it’s hot – and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

Smartness and scorching weather simply don’t go together; hot weather is casual, hot weather is bikini tops and frayed hems and lolling about with a frappucino in flip flops. Recently I’ve begun to wonder whether this scruffy attitude is a uniquely British trait. Because our summers are so brief, and come July we flee en masse to the Costa Brava, there’s a dearth of decent formal summer wear available on the high street, unless you work on a beach, or are willing to pay £150 for a Reiss shift which will look like it’s been worn by a chimney sweep after one trip on the tube. After all, if workers in Madrid and Rome can look chic at 30 degrees, why can’t we?

A friend of mine who works for the Foreign Office has been having problems too. Last Tuesday (during the heat wave) her legs weren’t ready to be bared, so she struck upon the idea of wearing hold-ups under her knee-length skirt. They were high enough to pass off as tights, she reasoned, but far cooler in the heat. Unfortunately, she hadn’t noticed a small rip in the back of the skirt, which caused it to ride up over the course of the morning. By her afternoon meeting at the embassy there was an inch gap of leg between hem and hold-ups. She had left for work looking like a professional, and returned home looking like a professional call-girl.

So are there any solutions to the problem? If your office has an all-suit policy I’m afraid I can’t suggest much, aside from taking off your jacket and thanking the air-con.

If you’re in a more casual office, try a formal hareem pant. They’re cool, they’re practical, they work with both heels and flatties and they’ll give you a sartorial edge over your colleagues. That is, of course, provided you buy the right ones. Get it wrong and you’ll look like a fat Jasmine.

Here’s my choice from Topshop.

By Lucy Pavia, Follow Lucy’s blog at www.girluninterrupted.co.uk/