If I Still Worked In An Office

This is probably what I would wear.

Jan 16, 2025

∙ Paid

Today’s paid edition includes an obsessively edited mix of fresh workwear ideas, solid shopping leads, and also—for my design people here—some work-space interiors inspo, too. It’s jam-packed AF and likely to get cut off, so please do click through to your browser or Substack app to read it in peace (and Like it while you’re at it:). If you’re not already upgraded to ATA paid, oh, do join us:)…these buggers take 4EVER to research and build and we appreciate all the support we can get:)…now, on with the show✨.

I miss working in an office. Not everyday, but enough that I wonder if I ever will again.

There was something about that buzzy feeling in the morning…not just to get ready and moving, but the ritual of routinely assembling myself, and the headspace I set up for the day ahead as a result. Over the past couple of decades, I’ve worked in all kinds of offices—basement spaces, crumbling landmark spaces, bleak corporate spaces, soaring industrial spaces—and in each one I’ve always been able to make a tiny home for myself, a desk/ie: a little world of my own.

Nostalgia tour, above: August 19, 2013, in my old office (wearing shoes that are grotesquely high). Below: Even though I didn’t have my own private office, I had a wonderful corner surrounded by windows and a desk that gave me a lot of joy and space to work, which I really, really loved and sometimes miss. Right: In the old lobby wearing a vintage trench that I chopped the sleeves off of and another pair of shoes that almost definitely gave me nerve damage. (Also, one of the two wonderful yellow vintage lounge chairs that would eventually go missing…:(.

For the last five years I’ve been working from the tiny loft work space in our apartment (ATA history, this was formerly a storage crawl space and not terribly luxurious). And while I do like to get dressed for working in my own home everyday, the motivation just isn’t the same.

It’s not so much that working in a shared office environment is about dressing for other people. I think it’s more that joy of being in a sort of collaborative experience together—where each of us would get to share a little something completely unique about ourselves without having to say a word. I definitely do not miss a lot of things related to working in formal offices, but I really did delight in that task of concocting something new and interesting every morning, something that had the power to charge my day.

And when someone else appreciated it, too…that was just a bonus.

Spaces I'd love to work in, or do ANYTHING in, pulled from my Pinterest office dream board.

It’s possible offices have been on my mind because it’s that time of year when we’re all in prime organizing mode—discarding all the stuff done/undone from 2024, getting our ducks in a row and summoning a sense of clarity as we step into this new chapter. And I suppose an office/studio/desk always makes me feel more focused about what I’d like to make happen. And getting dressed for the work everyday, whether that’s calls or writing or spreadsheet planning, is a special part of that.

Even though my commute nowadays is roughly 20 paces at best, I still take a lot of care and thought in what I wear. And yet, with no formal place to go, it makes it a little too easy to fall back on the usuals (ie: those damn sweatpants, The Jeans, or a swingy, unfussy dress—lots more good/smart shopping recs right here).

So, whether you work from home or you have a sprawling office to mill around (lucky you!), that’s the impetus for today’s missive: Stuff I’d be excited to wear to an office if I actually had one. Things good enough to shape the arc of my day and pieces with just enough dazzle n’ wink to give someone other than me (ie: YOU) a tiny spark of joy, too. Today’s exercise also gave me that little nudge to head back into my closet and look at some of my cherished things a little differently—ie, a few handbags ready for main stage; the vintage Prada coat I hadn’t worn in a year, or the new patent-leather oxfords that made me believe in Real Shoes that are not sneakers again (they actually have a HEEL).