{"id":1782165,"date":"2026-02-19T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1782165"},"modified":"2026-02-19T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T08:00:00","slug":"addressed-do-i-have-to-wear-a-bra-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1782165","title":{"rendered":"Addressed: Do I Have To Wear a Bra at Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/assets.vogue.com\/photos\/69961dbb007fd9a68feed238\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/addressed.png”]<\/p>\n

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Runway<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Addressed: Do I Have To Wear a Bra at Work?<\/h1>\n
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By <\/span>Liana Satenstein<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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There are headlines about women going brazenly bra-free every few years. These days, it\u2019s murmurings about Gen-Z saying au revoir to pesky underwire or tossing the brassiere altogether. Can we chalk up the renewed rejection of bras to confusion around return-to-office dress codes after the great work-from-home movement of COVID? Perhaps. Though leaving the bra in the top drawer is nothing new. Back in my day in the 2010s, it was all about #freeingthenipple, with the likes of Kendall Jenner and Rihanna stepping out in something sheer. Better yet, ask your mothers or grandmothers about the late \u201960s when there was a slew of \u201cI-am-woman-hear-me-roar\u201d bra burnings from second-wave feminists sick of restrictive cups, bands, and hooks.<\/p>\n

So, how does the pendulous breast pendulum swing for bras in the workplace? It depends. When I worked in magazines, I was chronically braless; my double As barely making a dent in whatever flimsy cotton or slinky viscose I wore. Of course, I worked with mostly women: nary a spreadsheet, nary a straight man in sight. If a shadow of an areola poked through, well, I never heard about it.<\/p>\n

Pre-magazines, though, I did have a job or two with unspoken dress codes. Before Vogue<\/em>, I was a sweet young woman who sat at a desk, strapped into a nondescript beige bra from TJ Maxx, breasts cradled by underwire, doing business membership sales for a soft-spoken Hasidic man in Chelsea, and later translating foreign commodities news for a start-up. Never the faintest outline of a nipple. Never a whisper of flesh.<\/p>\n

Why did I adhere to the unspoken rule of bra-wearing in a corporate setting? As I said, I\u2019m flat as a board, and sometimes, a bra isn\u2019t necessary. But subconsciously, I must have believed that I had to wear one. After all, everyone else around me did.<\/p>\n

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Batsheva, spring 2025 ready-to-wear<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Courtesy of Batsheva<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

I called up Batsheva Hay, a designer known for frilltastic dresses who in a former life was a lawyer. She had an answer with no soft-ball froufrou. \u201cThe job is about being acceptable and pleasant and not noticeable. No body shapes that aren\u2019t perfectly rounded. It\u2019s weird that a lot of these bras are perfecting, but it\u2019s really about deleting. You don\u2019t want to be noticed.\u201d Oy<\/em>. Hay\u2019s answer felt\u2026backwards. I mean, what if the air conditioning was on full blast? Is a little bit of nipple\u2026that bad? Hay told me to grow up: \u201cYou want to be able to do the task at hand. We work for the man. You don\u2019t want to have anyone staring at your nipples.\u201d I asked Hay: \u201cYou mean like \u2018the man\u2019 or \u2018a man?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cCorporate, but also, really, the man is usually a man\u2026that\u2019s the thing,\u201c she said. So much for my editorial utopia of women!<\/p>\n

As a lawyer, Hay rarely left her desk (or Blackberry), and if she happened to be sans bra, she would always put on a \u201cforgiving blazer.\u201d The only time she left the vice grip of her job? A once-a-year La Perla sample sale. She hasn\u2019t been in the corporate world for eons. So has it changed? She suggested I call up her accountant, Zellerita St. Louis, a mother of three, who has been in the business since the 2000s. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s very subjective, and it\u2019s to the person\u2019s individual taste. I feel like we all know, especially in corporate America, what is presentable and what\u2019s not presentable and when. You dress differently based upon where you\u2019re going or who you\u2019re meeting with.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Louis also noted that bra-wearing was cultural. \u201cI\u2019m a first-generation American. My mother\u2019s from Panama, and I feel like with her, everything was about appearance. She was very old-school, so I was always brought up to wear bras. It was something that was innate in me.\u201d Continuing, she said, \u201cI am an Afro-Latina, and as a Black woman, I think it\u2019s even more like, \u2018I got to be perceived in a certain manner, in a certain way.\u2019 So it was very important for me to fit the image of a professional, and that included wearing bras according to society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking for another angle on the situation, I called up my former Vogue<\/em> colleague Emily Farra, who is now in-house for a New York brand. Farra has always been the pinnacle of professionalism in my eyes and most certainly she wears a bra to work. \u201cBody politics aside, it goes back to the double standard around how women are perceived and the pressure to look \u2018presentable,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIn a typical office, if your hair\u2019s a little messy, your nails are chipped, you\u2019re noticeable not wearing a bra\u2013it might be registered or judged, even subconsciously. Whereas a guy can wear a wrinkled shirt or pants that don\u2019t fit and it doesn\u2019t matter nearly as much, because we haven\u2019t been conditioned as a species to evaluate their appearance before anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Braless at Tory Burch, fall 2026<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Daniele Oberrauch \/ Gorunway.com<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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Read More<\/div>\n

Why Are Climate Activists So Upset About Kim Kardashian\u2019s Nipple Bra?<\/span><\/p>\n

By <\/span>Rachel Cernansky<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"Kim<\/div>\n

What a drag for those yearning to go braless at their cubicle! A little cleavage? A nipple? What\u2019s the big deal!! Zillionaire Kim Kardashian, an aspiring lawyer herself, released a bra with stand-at-attention nipples last year, for goodness sake. Though, as Hay pointed out, \u201cthat makes no sense to anyone who actually works in the corporate world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Yes, the question of bras is subjective. These are your<\/em> breasts! This is your<\/em> chest! But we have to account for the reality of others, and titillating distractions, no matter how big or small. When in doubt, fasten your bra. You never know when the air conditioning will be going full blast.<\/p>\n

Addressed is a column about the act of getting dressed. If you have a pressing style question, ask us! Download the<\/em> Vogue app,<\/em>and find our Style Advice section to submit your question.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/assets.vogue.com\/photos\/69961dbb007fd9a68feed238\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/addressed.png”] Runway Addressed: Do I Have To Wear a Bra at Work? By Liana Satenstein February 19, 2026 There are headlines about women going brazenly bra-free every few years. These days, it\u2019s murmurings about Gen-Z saying au revoir to pesky underwire or tossing the brassiere altogether. Can we chalk up the renewed rejection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,50],"class_list":["post-1782165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1782165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1782165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1782165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1782165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}