In the Age of Individuality, Gen Z Still Longs for a Uniform
As a marketing strategist, 25-year-old Christina’s answer to what’s “safe” to wear at work is complicated. Her look is part of her job, but Christina doesn’t have an assigned uniform. Instead, every weekday, she wears some version of the Reformation ruched boatneck tank, black jeans, a shrug, and red ballet flats. The goal is not to express herself, but to look like she knows what The Row is.
Christina describes her office style as conservatively trendy. “I don’t want people at work to know who I really am,” she says. Outside the office, she slips into something more her: jorts, pointy-toed boots, a distressed, slightly-lower-cut tank. No shrug, obviously.
To Christina, individuality needs to be legible at work, and quiet luxury — what Fast Company deems the unofficial uniform of the client-facing creative profession — is her solution. By adhering to a certain brand of “basic,” Christina can demonstrate that she’s just edgy enough.
Uniforms — or at least a uniform state of mind — are making a comeback in the workplace, particularly for Gen Z. Following the slow death of remote work and the rise of GRWM culture, the bounds of what’s “office appropriate” have blurred for nearly everyone. New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman has deemed shorts office-appropriate, and Vogue has declared business casual dead. Meanwhile, the latest generational cohort, which entered the workforce largely on Zoom, has sparked more dress-code controversies than ever (ranging from wearing activewear to work to interpreting the “office siren” trend too literally).
The result is a cultural whiplash that has left Gen Z’ers anxious and confused about workplace dressing. For instance, many working in tech, an industry where sweatpants and T-shirts became commonplace, have started self-imposing Steve Jobs-style uniforms for fear of being flagged by HR. When I started my first job after the pandemic, I found myself sending my parents OOTDs for approval: Button-ups and maxi skirts, sure. Jorts were a definite no-go. (My mother, someone who’s worked in an office as a designer for most of her life, still insists that wearing a skirt over pants is silly.)
Once they land on a formula, there’s a huge incentive to stick with it. Eric, a 25-year-old software engineer, typically goes to work in a grey linen shirt, Dickies, and black adidas sneakers. He says his personal wardrobe is extremely informal, so he wears “what’s acceptable enough” to work. “I can’t be bothered to buy more appropriate clothes,” he says. The appeal of a uniform lies in how mindless it makes his morning routine, especially considering the disparity between what’s listed as acceptable on paper and what he observes.
At first glance, this desire for uniformity seems counterintuitive. Gen Z is coming of age online, with abundant access to style inspiration, criticism, and references. This has triggered an immense pressure to express yourself through fashion, to find your style through viral ‘hacks’ like the Three Word Method (summarizing your look in 3 adjectives), or using apps like Indyx to track your outfits every day. When third-grade teachers are wearing head-to-toe Chopova Lowena, a bland skirt-and-top combo doesn’t cut it.
But thanks to some pretty good dupes — and the internet-fueled trend cycle that has created a convergence of aesthetics — everyone seems to own a pair of Tabis, follow outfit formulas, and recreate looks from Pinterest. Algorithms have allowed trends to transcend states, even continents. TikTok made the concept of big pants and a small shirt a universal, canonic rule of fashion.
Sameness is inescapable. Outside of the office, unspoken codes already inform the way we dress. New York Magazine’s viral, scathing cover story insists that a white baby tee, blue jeans, and ballet flats inaugurate a West Village girl, the same way a quarter-zip knights the corporate Chad. Viv Chen, writer of popular fashion Substack The Molehill, reported on “wife pleasers,” personality sunglasses, and cosplay of baristas/bakers/food service workers (i.e. Jeremy Allen White in The Bear) as key pieces of the “Eastside Sartorial” archetype in LA. Going out in a black, skin-tight, long-sleeve top; blue jeans; and heeled boots has been nicknamed the Boston Uniform on TikTok. Calling out the uniformity has become its own kind of internet pastime, rewarding those who can name various aesthetics first (or best).
Every seemingly esoteric look can be boiled down to an archetype. The Greenpoint Girls are posting lists of ultra-specific brands, also on TikTok, and the Bushwick Bros have organized viral Performative Male competitions to put these tropes on display. A popular Instagram account called Starter Packs Only has amassed more than 200,000 followers just by posting annotated flat-lays of these personas in the style of early 2000s Tumblr.
And while there's a tendency to blame the algorithm for this cultural flattening, it’s clear that young people are also harboring a secret appetite for conformity. After all, you signal that you belong by dressing the part. Amid a seismic dismantling of sartorial rules across generations and class (tech billionaires are normalizing the “fuck you flip-flop”), it’s style anarchy.
For those even remotely online, it’s exhausting to navigate. It shouldn’t be a surprise that young people are thirsty for an easy way to look like they belong. “It’s expressing oneself within the confines of conformity,” says Casey Lewis, author of popular trend forecasting newsletter After School.
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Of course, the evolution of style has always worked this way: People observe established rules and norms, then spend a lifetime experimenting with those rules and norms as they fine tune their self-presentation. But for Gen Z, the stakes of that journey are arguably higher, considering the size of the public sphere they exist in: basically the whole internet. Looking the way you want, or at least looking “correct” according to the quickly shifting trends, codes, and signifiers swirling around you, feels like trotting yourself out in front of an audience of millions versus, say, your lecture hall. Factor in the internet’s ability to immortalize anyone’s appearance with a well-timed screenshot or meme, and you get a sense for why the task of developing a personal style is such a fraught affair for young people.
Lewis attributes part of the uniquely Gen-Z need to self-express to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because “style was irrelevant for a while,” she says, “people wanted to figure out how to show up in public again.” This identity crisis has accelerated a pathological need to express “themselves everywhere they go,” Lewis says. “It’s almost like a right to them.”
But the process isn’t as seamless or instantaneous as adding to your SSENSE cart. Lourdes, a 24-year-old project manager who grew up wearing a strict uniform to Catholic school, never spent much time thinking about what to wear. Once she entered “real life,” she found it difficult to feel comfortable in her clothes. “College was such a culture shock and an overload of new feelings, experiences,” she says. “It wasn’t just uniform during the day, PJs at night, and the occasional jeans-and-blouse moment on the weekends.” Lourdes used to rely on dated millennial Tumblr inspo and her mother’s eye in most clothing selections (Lourdes loved coral and teal, high-waisted shorts, and a skinny jean). But she’s grown into burning her bras, enormous jorts, and baby tees. “I’m aware of trends and leverage them,” she says. “It helps me figure out what I like.”
As many generations have learned for themselves, trends and “aesthetics” can feel safe when you’re still figuring things out. “It helps to have a framework,” says Caroline, a 25-year-old grad student, who spoke of dressing for different social situations as akin to dressing for a theme party, only every day. “Who am I to argue against the rules?” Caroline says, though for this generation, the “rules” might themselves be murkier or faster-changing than ever. For a casual evening, Caroline may sport a bodycon boat-neck knit dress with sandals, while a night out may involve a dark-wash jean, a peasant top, and ankle boots.
Gen-Z’s desire to articulate identity through fashion, when coupled with the internet’s fixation on microtrends, cultivates an environment where specific articles of clothing now carry built-in statements — too much red might signal political affiliation, and a simple leather jacket/All Birds combo can split hairs. It’s important to watch what you say.
For others, comfort is the main motivator. “I’m not always ready to take risks,” says Michelle, a 25-year-old investment banking analyst. “It’s not worth the flop.” On the rare occasion when Michelle does try something new, she describes it as beta testing: “I feel self-conscious, and it’s worse to be self-conscious than to be generic.” She cites an instance that shaped her risk-aversion, or what she describes as Fashion Risk Trauma: “I tried doing this floral beach hat vibe from Depop, and I feel like people gave me looks. I’ve learned I’m not a hat girl.” Michelle sticks to the Regal Dress from Aritzia for work and a combination of Brandy Melville merch beyond.
In Michelle’s case, the effort required to follow the rules pales in comparison to the burden of being performatively different. Worse still: the possibility that your hard work goes completely unappreciated. “If you go out on the street here, chances are no one will know what your outfit means,” says Xander, a 24-year-old grad student based in Indiana.
The problem, as Gen Z is discovering, is that for all the references and mood boards and online shopping hauls available to them, the work of putting together truly individual looks day after day is objectively difficult. Everyone wants personal style, but not everyone wants to, or has the funds to, put in the many hours of research, thought, experimentation, and tailoring. Uniform dressing offers a template to work from — a life raft in the choppy waters of sartorial uncertainty.
“People want individuality only if it’s easy,” says Skyli Alvarez, an editorial assistant. She gestures to the Labubu phenomenon with distaste. To the extent that Jane-Birkin-ifying your purse is ironic (Birkin wore her bag to death over a lifetime while influencers are purchasing new ones to wreck in seconds), Skyli argues that Labubus make individuality a collectible good. She draws a parallel between Labubu and trending aesthetics, where you can subscribe to a pre-approved brand of uniqueness by watching a “How to Dress Like You’re From The Lower East Side” TikTok.
After my conversation with Lourdes, I kept returning to her comparison of getting dressed to having “different avatars.” It was a reminder that context is what truly defines personal style: the missing ingredient that separates performative subway readers from people actually reading and fashion risks from your dad’s lawn-mowing shoes. Fashion lends itself to misinterpretations, nuanced codes, and if-you-know-you-know conventions dictated by your geography, community, and algorithm. It can be hard to navigate, and the older you get, the more confident you become. So it makes sense that Gen Z gravitates toward a uniform. They’re starting with what they know, and they’re developing our ultra-specific, context-dependent looks from there. After all, every good wardrobe starts with the basics.
