Oh look! A New Girl in Town!

As I look to enter the corporate world, one thing that really excites me is the fashion. On the surface, choosing an outfit seems simple. For me, it is a form of self-expression — a way to step into the world feeling more confident and give the world a glimpse of who I am. London is a place where individuality and creativity shine through. It’s a place where you can take liberties and still look like you belong. There is something magical about putting together an outfit that excites you and is authentic to you. Fashion fosters a community in a way that mainly women recognize—the compliments exchanged in restaurant bathrooms to grocery store lines and the casual ‘I love those shoes’ comments from a stranger on the street. Our clothes tell a story and become tied to different moments and memories in our lives.

So, as I reflect on why fashion matters to me, I keep coming back to the question: if fashion is a form of empowerment and self-expression, then why does it feel like women have to suppress that expression to be taken seriously at work?

Of course, professionalism is necessary, and there are different outfits for a festival than for the office. But for a lot of women, it isn’t just about finding a polished and professional look; it’s about calibrating a dozen invisible dials at once—dials most men never have to know exist. It’s then taking these dials and trying to strike the nonexistent perfect balance:

Appearance is the first thing people notice about you, and fashion plays a big part in that. As I begin this next chapter in my life, I find myself constantly calculating how every choice—a colour, a hemline, a skirt or trousers, a heel or a flat, glasses or no glasses—will contribute to how seriously I am taken. It makes me wonder if women have less room for error in how we are perceived based on what we wear.

In her book The Look, Michelle Obama explores the scrutiny she faced around her fashion choices and appearance as a professional woman in the public eye. Headlines were made about what she was wearing, not her Harvard Law degree, work with the community, or her impressive career. Any woman in the public eye faces this same pattern, and there’s no real winning in it, because there will always be something. She gracefully puts it as

“It is the habit of the culture to put women in their place by attacking their physical being.”

She was no longer recognized by her accomplishments but by her appearance as the president’s wife. She faced a lot more scrutiny for her fashion choices as the president’s wife than the president ever did himself. She’s described fashion as

“A language she could use deliberately, a way to say something about who she was before she ever opened her mouth.”

And rather than let the scrutiny diminish her, she used the attention it generated to make sure people were listening when she spoke—what she calls the “soft power of fashion”.

The expectations placed on a woman’s appearance are much higher and hold a lot more influence in professional settings. It is something that we as women will always have to rise above and find ways to use our choices to our advantage.

In some ways, it begs the very real question: are we dressing for ourselves or for the male gaze? No one made headlines about what shoes or the cut of the suit her husband was wearing. Michelle’s outfit became the headline before she even said a word. I feel that we as women are conscious of these choices because of that asymmetry—because professionalism has quietly come to mean that women shed their femininity in a way it never asks men to shed their masculinity. Fashion, for us, is both empowerment and expectation at once. Society places a greater emphasis on a woman’s appearance. For women, learning how to embrace it intentionally is one way we can reclaim our power in spaces that often try to define us before we define ourselves.

It makes me ponder the choices I will make and how I will inevitably be perceived based on those choices. Since I am just at the start of my career, I am asking myself questions such as: Do I have to sacrifice certain things that men do not have to? How can I show up in the world in the right way since my outfit will introduce me before I have the opportunity to introduce myself? I don’t want to fold into the corporate mould. I want to be professional but still unmistakably me—because the outfit that walks into the room will always speak before I do. And if women’s clothing is going to be read as a headline regardless of what we choose, then the only real freedom left is choosing to make that headline ours. Not the safest read on us, not the least distracting version of us—the true one. I want to present as my most authentic self.

So the next time I get dressed for a room that is going to judge me either way, I’m not going to ask what won’t get noticed. I’m going to ask, ‘What do I want them to hear before I speak? Or as Michelle says,

“If you can’t beat them, work their fascination to your advantage.”

Quotes sourced from:

Michelle Obama, The Look, Crown, 2025

Michelle Obama, IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson, “The Style and Grace of Michelle Obama,” Episode 35, November 5, 2025.