Corpcore: The Corporate Chic Aesthetic

“While 2023 may have been the year of ‘girlhood’, as represented by bows everywhere, I think 2024 is going to be about womanhood,” says TV writer Remy Solomon in one of her Tik Toks. "Think Femme Fatale at the office," she adds. 

2023 fashion was greatly defined by the reiteration of Lolita-esque, girly microtrends such as balletcore, cottagecore, and coquettecore. This year, another core-ism is appearing on the scene, bringing about a more grown-up aesthetic. 

Corpcore takes inspiration from Gisele Bündchen's brief appearance as 'office siren' Serena in The Devil Wears Prada, modern-day Miu Miu, Bella Hadid's librarian-esque outfits made up of striped button downs and prescription glasses, as well as 90's Prada. "The style is sleek yet feminine, structured, and tailored, with a refined and neutral color palette," says Zizi Strater for Byrdie. Generally speaking, corporate chic can be seen as the amalgamation of high-fashion camp and classic office wear uniform. “A move away from the ‘clean girl’ and ‘quiet luxury’ ethos, corpcore takes reference from office attire in the ‘90s, exploring classic workwear in a slightly grungier and streamlined manner,” says Sophie Tan for Vogue. 

The trend first emerged after the Spring/Summer 24 fashion month last September, when houses like Boss and Jil Sander embraced corporate chic. Along the same lines, during the Fall/Winter 24 fashion month, Prada debuted a collection of 9-to-5 ready-to-wear in which spectators were seated in office chairs. It was not long after Spring/Summer 24, however, that the aesthetic began to hit TikTok, naturally. TikTokers began to spread their wisdom on keeping a sense of style while maintaining professionalism at the office. 

Interestingly, the corpcore aesthetic is emerging around the same time that the Saturn-Neptune conjunction (2024–2027) is unfolding. This is also a time in which Gen Z is entering the workforce for the first time, but not alike prior generations did in past decades. As they began their careers working remotely or on hybrid schedules, Gen Zers are now starting to experience the corporate lifestyle. And it is not as glamorous as they were made to believe by Y2K rom-coms (The Devil Wears Prada being one of them). “The office siren label is also not just about how you look, but just one of the many ways Gen Z is romanticizing their life through clothes” says Strater. 

In corpcore, we can perceive the principle of Saturn, which is all about structure, maturity, tradition, discipline, authority, effort, efficiency and stability (and thus, tends to be seen as representative of the corporate world). Saturn is merging with the principle of Neptune, associated with the transcendent, spiritual, ideal, symbolic, and imaginative dimensions of life. “Not only does the aesthetic allow them to play a character of sorts, it’s a way to shake up otherwise boring office looks” says Strater. During this Saturn-Neptune conjunction, newcomers in the corporate world are imbuing their office wear with artistry and inspiration in order to make their day-to-day duties a little more exciting. 

“A shirt and tie wouldn't have been considered subversive 10, 15 years ago,” says Laura Reilly, founder and editor of the fashion shopping newsletter Magasin, “but with the last of the corporate workforce largely freed of their dress codes since remote work became at least partially the norm post-covid, the building blocks of ‘business formal’ can take on new meaning.” As it often is with the Saturn-Neptune combination, the corporate chic aesthetic is full of contradictions. In many ways, Saturn and Neptune appear to be complete opposites. Once the most distant planet visible to the naked eye, Saturn, symbolizes stone-cold reality, “the permafrost of factual truth and factual limits, the boundary between the known and the unknown” as astrologer Steph Koyfman puts it in her blog Lady Cazimi. Neptune, on the other hand, represents the intangible contents of our dreams and ideals. “Neptune is a fog or a mist prone to suggestion, a vapor that faithfully reflects your projections” Koyfman explains. Therefore, Saturn and Neptune together tends to result in a dance wherein both repeatedly negate each other. In the current Saturn-Neptune conjunction, this has been oddly manifested in the TikTok microtrend of corpcore. 

As touched upon, the corporate chic trend can be seen as the idealization and/or romanticization (Neptune) of corporate culture (Saturn). But it is also relevant to remember that the aesthetic was partly born thanks to the disintegration (Neptune) of boundaries (Saturn) in corporate culture (once again, Saturn) that Gen Z has experienced since the pandemic and the rise of remote and hybrid work. As office wear is becoming more and more casual, what was once considered ‘ordinary’ (i.e. the Y2K corporate uniform) is now infused with mystique and glamour. One more way in which the corpcore trend dissolves boundaries in a Saturn-Neptune fashion is that it allows working women to dress for the office in the same outfits they can hit the nightclub with. “Being able to dress for both a midday meeting and an evening cocktail hour is ideal for those on the go,” says Shopbop fashion director Caroline Maguire. The corpcore aesthetic is a perfect example of how planetary transits have an effect in all different aspects of culture and how these are, more often that not, heavily interconnected.