Out to brunch blazer.
We'll talk with Wall Street Journal reporter Lane Florsheim about how you can make your clothes work beyond 9 to 5 and stay on trend.
That's after the break.
Classic office staples like suits and pencil skirts are getting a new twist as trends like Office Siren and Corp Corp gain popularity with younger workers.
Wall Street Journal reporter Lane Florsheim joins me.
Lane, why is workwear such a constant conversation, especially online?
Workwear, like all clothing, is emotional.
One of the women I interviewed for this story about how Gen Z is dressing said that a lot of Gen Z thinks that going into an office would be more fun if they dressed well.
And I think that's something that anyone in any generation can probably relate to.
How has the way we thought about workwear evolved over the last few years?
I mean, I feel like it's always changing.
Even before the pandemic, you saw office dressing getting more casual.
I was looking at some old journal articles.
And in 2016, we wrote about how J .P.
Morgan said that employees don't always have to wear suits.
But then, of course, you had the pandemic and everyone's in comfy clothes, sweatpants all the time.
So I think you both have people wanting to be more casual and comfortable.
But then you also have people who, like the woman I just mentioned, want to be able to express themselves with how they dress for the office.
And they want to feel fashionable and they don't want to feel like this is my buttoned up office look that I would never wear out to dinner with friends.
So how different is Gen Z's perspective on workwear from their older colleagues?
Like, what are we seeing?
One of the most interesting parts of reporting this story was learning that a lot of women, especially young women, are shifting away from having like a work section of their closet and an everything else section of their closet.
I think that a lot of Gen Z and people in general want to invest in pieces they can wear anywhere and really get their money's worth.
So if you're buying a blazer, you want it to be like your office blazer, you're going out blazer, you're running out to brunch blazer.
It's kind of having things in your closet that are multi -purpose, including a blazer, I'm hearing, in the office.
I think it's twofold.
On the one hand, these trends and aesthetics like corp core and office siren and corporate fetish really started as social media aesthetics and aren't necessarily meant to be super prescriptive with telling people this is how you should dress for the office.
But office siren especially really oftentimes references the 80s and 90s office with like pencil skirts and the little glasses and pinstripes.
And so it's kind of like a fun way just to get dressed in general.
Brands and influencers drive a lot of these styles that we see, who are the key names and companies behind this?
I interviewed a number of the ones that I think are pretty key for the story, which are also kind of like oftentimes like mall brands and out the office that you wish you worked at, not always to be taken super, super literally.
I interviewed Emily Sundberg, who writes the business newsletter Feed Me for the Story.
And she was talking about how a lot of influencers she knows, like really had the goal of like doing a panel last year.
And she said something that made me laugh, which is like, they really want to do a panel and be a girl boss, even if the panel's like in the back of a restaurant.
And this kind of dressing can also provide like a layer of legitimacy for some people who want to be taken seriously as, you know, founders or influencers or, you know, whatever it is.
If someone wants to step out of their comfort zone with their outfit on Monday, but isn't ready to fully commit to a closet revamp or an office siren revamp, what are things that they can do to try out the corp core trend on a budget.
I mean, this didn't make it into the story, but one of the brand founders I spoke to, Gael Drevet, who does the Frankie shop, who was talking about how just a blazer is the easiest way to look put together and office ready in, you know, two seconds.
It's an easy way to kind of like dip your toes into this trend.
And also so many brands have different styles of blazers.
now. I was talking about the more relaxed fit, but Aritzia has, like, a cinched fit blazer that can be kind of a going out look as well.
And some of them have cropped blazers and, you know, things like that.
So it's really, like, a wide range that you can look into for yourself if you're curious.
Mm -hmm. So dipping your toes with a blazer, maybe a fun necklace, and then full -on backless gown yeah that that might be you know for later on that's w sd reporter lane florsheim and that's it for your money briefing tomorrow we'll have our weekly markets wrap up what's news and markets and then we'll
be back on monday this episode is produced by just jupiter i'm your host ariana aspuru jessica fenton and michael laval wrote our theme music our supervising producer is melanie roy aisha amuslam is our development producer Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are our deputy editors.
And Felana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of News Audio.
Thanks for listening.
For better and worse, people we are close to can affect us in profound ways.
Sometimes, these effects are fleeting, and sometimes they last for years.
When we come back, the physiological and psychological effects of holding a grudge.
You're listening to Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
This is Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
When someone wrongs us, holding a grudge against them almost feels like a form of justice.
But psychologist Fred Luskin says that more often than not, grudges don't hurt the targets of our anger.
They hurt us. Fred, we've discussed a few ways in which people can hurt us, but sometimes it's a process that hurts us.
One person you worked with was upset she did not get a job promotion.
Can you tell me Dana's story and what went through her mind?
dana is one of the people that even after a decade or more i still remember her issue was that she was a great worker for a local silicon valley company who worked above and beyond what anybody could expect from an employee.
She came in early. She also was ambitious.
And so she had an expectation that that best effort would lead to a promotion.
So after a number of years of getting promoted appropriately, there was a bigger job right ahead of her that she just knew she was the right person for the job and had earned it.
And when she found out that she didn't get that job, she became furious.
I mean, hell hath no fury.
I mean, because she had checked all the boxes.
so if i understand correctly fred dana's reaction to not being promoted was the sense that she had wasted 10 years of her life that all this time and effort she had spent at the company going above and beyond all of it was wasted effort wasted effort and that she was an idiot for putting in all that effort.
It was a multi -pronged attack towards both her employer and towards herself.
Let's look at one aspect of the story you just told me.
So this was an employee who did not get a promotion.
Another way of looking at this is to say, the company has a number of different priorities.
Maybe I don't fully understand all the priorities of the company.
They've picked somebody else, but it's actually not about me.
It's just about what the company needed to do at this time.
Exactly. The not getting the promotion, Dana heard that, that it's about Dana.
She took it personally.
It's my company, my job.
I did all this work.
I made all this effort.
She took the no, the rejection as a personal affront.
Now, in some ways, it's worth pointing out, of course, that not getting that promotion did indeed have personal effects on Dana.
It might have affected her life, her finances, maybe even her retirement plan.
So it had consequences in her personal life, Fred.
Absolutely. So there's no denying that Dana's body and mind were affected by not getting the job.
what there is room to negotiate is how much of that effect had to do with Dana's expectations, not just the not getting the job.
I want to talk about another component of grudges, Fred.
You walked with a man named Alan, whose wife cheated on him.
Can you tell me his story and thoughts that constantly circled around in his mind?
So Alan had a wife who cheated on him, And she didn't like try to hide it.
You know, it was like, we're married, but you don't satisfy me.
So, you know, I have an affair.
And she shut him down if he started to complain or articulate his needs.
So Alan just had one of those like doozies of a story.
It's all her fault.
The blame is the second piece of a three -part sequence.
It starts with taking it too personally, which you covered.
When we take things too personally, our mind and body react in a very harsh, physically disruptive, and emotionally suffering way.
and then we have to talk to ourselves about what happened so all three of those end up as this quality of blame you you did it to me i'm not responsible for how bad i feel and i'm going to talk to myself that solidifies this as a blaming story One technique that you teach is to ask people to be mindful about the interventions
they have tried in the past and the effectiveness of those interventions.
You worked with a woman named Alice who did not get along with her in -laws.
Tell me how she tried to fix the problem and how you helped her?
I mean, Alice, like everybody, tries usually what the fight or flight brain gives it.
So if you don't like your in -laws, you go, well, I'm not going to talk to them, or I am going to, you know, tell them how I feel, or I'm going to stew, or I'm going to tell my husband to stop.
Or sometimes you say, well, none of that worked, so I won't talk to them, or I'll make the conversation short, or when they visit, I won't be here.
And the really handy thing is, instead of continuing strategies that don't help you, take 15 minutes and write them down.
So we asked Alice, what do you do when your in -laws are not what you want them to be she wrote down six things we said did they work she said no we said don't do them again and so we saved alice a lot of grief because if like being snarky to your in -laws is not helpful at least don't be snarky.
Say to yourself, I know what doesn't work.
Let me see if I can experiment to find out what does work.
And of course, the point that you're making here is that very often when we're carrying grievances around, we try the same thing over and over and over and over again.
We come back to the same strategy over and over again.
It doesn't work, but we say, okay, next time I'm really going to tell this person off, And next time, they're going to come to their senses and realize how much they've wronged me.
But that's the direct result of anger on the brain.
Anger reduces blood flow to the prefrontal cortex.
Your thinking capacities and your creativity are dimmed.
If you can soothe that anger in the moment, then you get your blood flow and your brain back, and you get a chance to think of some different strategies.
And that is the simplest description of how forgiveness is helpful.
Fred walked me through a mental practice he calls positive emotion refocusing technique, or PERT for short.
Just take two slow, deep breaths into and out of your belly.
slow and deep just take two slow deep breaths into and out of your belly and when your belly inhales allow it to expand and now bring to your mind's eye a picture of someone you love Just bring to your mind's eye a picture of someone you really, really, really love.
And try to feel that love in your body.
Try to almost feel it in your heart.
And then you can open your eyes.
What we taught Alice and all the women from Northern Ireland is when you get a picture or a thought about your mother -in -law or the murder, practice this.
Don't allow your nervous system to be hijacked by stress.
Practice this immediately.
We told the women in Northern Ireland, you may have to practice this 50 times before it has an impact, but then you're starting to counter condition your stress response.
With Alice, it wasn't quite that tough.
You know, it was so maybe after eight practices we'd say, OK, you got your mind back.
Now, what can you do?
what might be a strategy to use with either your husband or your in -laws that doesn't bring back stress for you and that becomes the inner guidepost so she said well I guess I could just take a deep breath when they upset me and they'd say beautiful try that or instead of giving your husband grief,
ask for his help. You can't come up with any of those solutions as long as fight or flight is active.
So PERT is just a simple practice to shut that down.
Fred says there is lots of evidence that reducing hostility is good for our mental and physical health.
The old saying is true, anger does the most harm to the vessel that stores it.
One analysis found that far from soothing our pain, grudges have a way of increasing our experience of chronic suffering as seen in conditions like fibromyalgia.
It's a study that reviewed all the research and suggested pathways for how forgiveness could reduce the rumination and anger that are so constant companions to fibromyalgia.
And they now know that the mental component of anger and rumination blends in with the pain.
