Edgy Active to Workwear Items to Elevate Your Work Wardrobe

Edgy Active to Workwear Items to Elevate Your Work Wardrobe
The P.E Edit is power-dressing inspired by performancewear–a high-tech, high-fashion clothing system that elevates everyday looks and workwear outfits.

From Confidence to Clothes - Passports To Life Post-Pandemic

As we sweat it out in gyms, go bumper-to-bumper on dance floors into the wild hours of the night and observe the constant stream of European holiday footage (maybe you're one of the lucky ones posting up in Positano limoncello spritz in hand), it's hard to think that lockdowns were our daily life only a short time ago. Commuting from desk to draining board, staying in touch via a thousand shiny satellites, wearing everyday attire that reflected our stay-at-home, work-at-home routines.

The Return To Normal

Even with all the dancing and Santorini sunsets on display, the global re-emergence and return to ordinary events worldwide is still a work in progress. Jumping from an unprecedented experience - at least in our lifetime - back to a life we enjoyed before everything was a process. It takes time to adjust. And wherever we are in that process - from embracing it all to taking it one day at a time - it's normal to accept where we are.

With all this said, it's in our nature to reunite, to return to togetherness. Something experts can attest, with Professor Ian Hickie, co-director of the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, explaining coping mechanisms. In an interview with the Guardian: Human beings, he says, are social animals and cope in a crisis by coming together. Our mental health is better when we are at school, work and socially connected.

"The treatment, the cure, is to go out there in the world and discuss with others and get back to your normal life."

Post-Pandemic Life

Re-entering life post-pandemic brings to light our personal and individual evolutions, both mentally and emotionally, since the term 'Covid-19' first entered into our everyday lexicon.

UK research discovered a 'crisis of confidence' among young people returning to work. While other studies saw positive well-being benefits experienced by communities over the past couple of years. There's a 'new norm' that will take adjusting. Confidence plays a significant role in making that return as comfortable as possible.

Post-Pandemic Dress Code

Such a pause like the one we've just endured will mean a sudden return to office life. Whether hybrid or full-time, it leaves us wondering about commutes, reconnecting with colleagues IRL, and what workwear outfits we have left in our wardrobes. What does workwear fashion look like now - has office wear for women changed since we switched from stand-ups to home-schooling, from all hands to isolation? And how has our own personal style evolved?

How Clothes Affect Confidence

What we wear affects our confidence, how we see ourselves, and how others perceive us. This goes for everyone - man or woman: what we choose to wear and how we style our office work clothes can affect our self-image, the impression we give and how others respond to us.

Our workwear outfits, i.e. our personal presentation, convey so much information about who we are. So much in just one decision: what to wear at the office.

Our lives, our days, are never linear. And P.E. Nation works to fit into the fast-paced, multi-faceted lives we lead. Or as our Co-Founder Pip Edwards puts it, "I like to think of our brand as a dynamic amoeba; we flex and move with culture and lifestyle and what is going on."

P.E. Nation is built on this idea–to provide clothes and flexible styling options we can wear as our life armour, from day to night, inside and outside the gym. From the outset, we've always wanted to design a wardrobe that makes you and us feel powerful. To fit in with how we live and move. To boost how we feel and support us as we evolve, grow, and level up.

What To Wear At Work

This is the concept from which the P.E Edit collection was built. Our elevated capsule, launched in early 2021, P.E Edit is power-dressing inspired by performancewear. A high-tech, high fashion clothing system to wear as one capsule or weave into your everyday looks. The perfect solution when we're wondering what the post-pandemic work dress code looks like. What do work clothes for women look like?

The P.E Edit features everything you might need in your wardrobe as office work clothes: premium activewear leggings and sports crops, blended with luxury blazers, vests, slim-fitting knitwear, oversized T-shirts, faux leather pants, hyper-flared denim and hot-as-hell dresses.

All are delivered in statement silhouettes, luxurious fabrications and unexpected textures. Find something you can wear day to night. The P.E Edit features the perfect workwear outfits and smart casual workwear to fit your office's culture and unique professional dress code.

Here are a few work outfit ideas from P.E Edit's latest collection to get you feeling inspired and confident.

Fashionable Work Clothes

If a simple shirt-and-pants co-ord is your smart casual workwear go-to, P.E Edit provides. The Abstraction Shirt understands the women's business casual brief. It features a custom zig zag print, gold-plated button-up hardware and extended sleeve cuffs and collar.

For futuristic nostalgia and an elevated look, you can work back with plenty of shorts, pants and leggings from the P.E Edit collection. We recommend styling your ensemble with the Abstraction Legging, Propel Bike Short and Precinct Pant. More than women’s work trousers, they’re a faux-leather style with shoelace tie detail in goes-with-everything Sea Spray.

If classic monochrome is your style of office work clothes, try stylish work pants like the Nightfall Pant. These are another faux-leather garment in an all-black cracked high-shine finish that match perfectly with pointed heels, boots or strappy stilettos for a day-to-after-dark fit. Pair them with the Precinct Shirt in Cherry Tomato, a bright-cropped collared style that commands attention and cultivates confidence.

No workwear outfits are complete without outerwear layers that keep you warm on the commute and carry-alls that hold all your everyday essentials. Key purses to embrace this season include the Future Bag, a larger carry-all bag in hyper-shiny fabrication, and its small sibling, the No Rules Mini Bag, for days when you don't need to tote anything too bulky back-and-forth.

This season's P.E Edit outerwear works hard, too - the Maximal Jacket features an oversized silhouette, large hood and tonal P.E Nation motif. The Aurora Jacket - a black sleeveless vest with yellow block-colour trim - is our recommendation for warmer days.

Enclothed cognition, a term first coined by researchers in 2012, gives a name to the psychological phenomenon that what we wear affects us on an emotional level (i.e., you look good, you feel good). It explains how power dressing exists. And how a blazer makes us feel more confident walking into an interview for a dream job or nailing a presentation we've been working on for weeks.

The bolder the energy of our clothes and the confidence of the influencers we see wearing them, the more significant the boost to our inner strength and self-belief. As Vogue describes, "If your brain links [fashion] collections with powerful, intelligent women, you're likely to take on those attributes when you wear that … skirt or … jacket."

All towards your smooth re-entry to the new normal from the office to city streets. Even those sundowners in Santorini will need some office outfit ideas.

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