UAE: How to master power dressing in 2025 using Apple TV+'s 'Severance' for inspiration
Eid celebrations are over, school holidays are winding down and regular office hours have resumed. The UAE is back to business. And, for the first time since Covid took a wrecking ball to office dress codes, workwear is at the top of the fashion agenda, thanks to the most-watched TV show in the history of Apple TV+, the sci-fi dystopian thriller Severance.
If you've not seen it (and you really must), the overall premise is an exploration of what happens if our work lives are entirely separated from our home lives. The protagonists undergo a procedure that separates their conscious into Innies (corporate drudges tasked with 'work that is mysterious and important' for Lumon Industries, their employer and inventor of the severing concept) and Outies, the side of the self that gets to live life, blissfully ignorant of office politics, and immune from Sunday night dread as the work week looms. To be 'severed' promises the ideal work:life balance.
As you'd expect from Apple, the production design is impeccable, a masterclass in storytelling through the use of colour. On the severed floor at Lumon, the protagonists of the Macrodata Refinement team are shown via a palette of almost exclusively blue and green. Not since the 1988 movie Working Girl made Melanie Griffiths' boxy suits and bouffant hair de rigueur, has office style been so aesthetically all-in. But while Working Girl was about power dressing, Severance's corporate automatons are powerless. Each day they are dressed by their Outie, consciousness switching to their innie persona in the Lumon Industries elevator. 'She dresses me in the morning, like I'm a baby,' bemoans Helly R, played by Britt Lower, of her Outie's control over what she finds herself wearing each day. While the conflict between Helly R's inside and outside selves is central to the show's narrative thread (no spoilers here), were I in her nude, block-heeled shoes, I'd be less quick to condemn my Outie's fashion choices. Like Apple's iconic founder, the late Steve Jobs, who wore an Issey Miyake black turtleneck, Levi's 501 blue jeans and New Balance trainers from the 1990s until his death in 2011, there is something to be said for a workwear wardrobe that is reliable, repeatable and rudimentary, as Lumon Industries' verbose Mr Milchick may or may not have said.
As Severance 's central female character, and the standard bearer for the show's style credentials, Helly R's office wear, as chosen by her Outie Helena, revolves around some form of blue A-line pencil skirt, three-quarter length sleeve knit top, and those nude heels (specifically French footwear brand Repetto's Marlow style; designed for dancers, durable for eight hours at your desk, whether your job entails running down Lumon Industries' endless sterile corridors or not). There are no prints, no extraneous detail, and very little variation in silhouette, bar the occasional shift dress. Build a wardrobe of mix-and-match block-coloured basics, and you too can devote as little time as Helly R does to thinking about what to wear for work (even if her lack of sartorial say-so is down to bioengineering rather than free will). The trick is to find a palette you are comfortable working within, pun entirely intended. For me, it would be a spectrum of beige, from ivory to camel (do not attempt this if you have children under the age of five). Then, harness the discipline to shop only within those shades, sticking to simple shapes that suit your body type. Thus, in true Lumon style, freeing your creativity and frivolity to run wild outside of office hours. Just not too wild. Where Helly R's wardrobe is a lesson in restraint, it's wise to be discerning in your choice of televisual style cues. I once got carried away watching a Love Is Blind reunion show, ending up down a Google rabbit hole and impulsively ordering a floor-length rhinestone sheath dress from partywear brand Babyboo.
It looked fantastic on screen, but, being neither a reality TV star, nor a highschooler with an upcoming prom, it has yet to emerge from its box. In a world of unlimited style choices, there's something to be said for limiting your shopping self's freedom of thought (Season 3 of Severance?). So, the next time a new series of Selling Sunset tempts me with the prospect of 150mm heels, I'll stream some discordant jazz and hit up Clarks for a Helly/Helena-approved court shoe instead.
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