Up with the Yuppies: Office Wear and the Corp-core Aesthetic
First used in the 1980s, the term ‘Yuppie’ stands for “young urban professional” and refers to a fashionable young middle-class person usually chasing financial success in the city corporate environment. People romanticised office life, from the crowded commutes, claustrophobic cubicles and water-cooler conversations.
The Yuppie aesthetic was one of perfectly tailored Ralph Lauren power suits, briefcases, narrow glasses, black coffee, pencil skirts and tennis on weekends.
Sound familiar? It’s back and bigger than ever, so slip on your bayonetta glasses, slide on those sling-back heels and swipe through the seemingly infinite office fashion TikToks swirling through the algorithm.
In 2022, Byrdie released an article titled “Why is Every Fashion Girl Dressing Like Patrick Bateman Right Now?” and although it’s undergone several mutations, such as the ‘office siren’ aesthetic, corpcore remains in the media mainstream and is still dominating runways during last year’s Fall Fashion shows. The more traditional interpretations, seen in Armani’s AW25 collection, focused on impeccable tailoring, accentuated collars, and black, navy, brown, or beige colour palettes. However, more experimental runways literally brought the office to life, for example the Prada FW24 show that seated attendees in office wheelie chairs and had the runway surrounded by corporate cubicles.
Movies and television have also reflected this resurgence of corpcore across several genres, highlighting the workplace aesthetic, office politics and obviously fashion. In 2025 alone, corporate horror like Babygirl and Severance dominated the media, and the release of Materialists cemented urban corporate fashion firmly in the cultural zeitgeist. Severance costume designer Sarah Edwards commented that she wanted the characters' clothing to convey a sense of ‘timelessness’ and simultaneous oppression, drawing on silhouettes and colour palettes from John T. Molloy’s Dress for Success Manuals (also known as the ‘Yuppie Bible’), but strategically removing any identifiable logos. Many of the pieces, like Helly’s iconic blue skirt, were custom-made with the intention of “extreme minimalism” to create the overwhelmingly soulless style.
Using older aesthetics to inform the newer corpcore style is also very common across social media, as feeds are flooded with vintage Vogue, Miranda Priestly quotes, and stills from Sex and the City. This reinforces the romanticisation of the corporate environment, curating a closet that enables the individual to imagine themselves as Jenna Rink or Andy Sachs in the workplace romcom, or the effortlessly cool Jim Halpert from the workplace sitcom era.
Moreover, in the music scene, Grammy Winner Doechii has also made her mark on corpcore by blending traditional Yuppie fashion with alternative streetwear and bold makeup. She frequently partners with Thom Browne, a fashion house that claims to redefine “tailoring through uniformity, proportion and precise construction”, all of which are trademarks of the corporate style. However, the rapper places these preppy structured pieces in contrast with knee-high lace-up boots, bright blue eyeliner or 6-inch stiletto nails, demonstrating her unique take on the aesthetic. This sentiment aligns closely with what fashion influencer @Katfromfinance writes on corporate core today, as she notes that
“There’s been a real shift from blending in to standing out; professionalism today is less about uniformity and more about individuality.”
That’s not to say that any of us will be able to rock a polo shirt and bootie shorts at the office anytime soon, but the reinterpretation of formerly mandated dress-codes in favour of personal style is certainly gaining traction.
Another resurgence may be on the horizon as we wait with baited breath for the Devil Wears Prada 2 release on April 30th, which is sure to provide some iconic corporate looks. No spoilers, but the cast has been spotted in all manner of trench coats, heels and pantsuits that pays tribute to the ambitious and fashion-forward style of the Yuppies of office-past. Whether corpcore revival is as oppressive as Severance depicts, or rather a personal rebellion against the man is still up for debate, but based on the recent revitalisation we can expect the office aesthetic to stick around for some time yet.