Are We Supposed to Be Frosty At Work?
It’s freezing. I’m not talking of cinematic snow-globe freezing or romantically freezing. But a version of cold that gets marrow deep into your joints and starts annoyingly interfering with any kind of thinking.
It’s also torrential rain, sub-zero air, and a long haul from countryside into London by train, followed by a steely boardroom where I’m expected to be sharp, decisive, and capable of walking with purpose.
Walking with purpose matters to me. If I can’t move like a big boy1 through a space, my attention fractures.
January and February are bastards for this.
In warmer months, I don’t have to think about it. In winter, it becomes a logistical puzzle no one talks about: how to stay warm enough to think without dressing in a way that invites questions about my judgement.
If I were employed, this would be easier. I’d keep work clothes at work. A drawer. Some hooks. A radiator that might belong to me.
I’d commute wrapped like a Victorian orphan and change into something crisp on arrival.
But I’m a consultant.
My travel kit has to be the outfit. It has to survive wind-scoured platforms, cold carriages with damp seats, and people eating stinking hot baps, and still read as credible power on a VIP client floor.
This week, I nearly cried when I saw a woman in corporate gear wearing cropped trousers, flat loafers, and no socks or tights. Bare flesh. Ankles out. In actual winter2.
I wasn’t judging her. I was alarmed.
How is she not full body rocking while blubbing? How is she even thinking? What internal furnace is she running that the rest of us weren’t issued?
I do not run hot. I feel the cold. My body responds to it with paralysis, distraction, and a low-level misery that makes everything harder than it needs to be.
Warmth, for me, is not comfort. It’s cognitive infrastructure.
Work dress codes assume a woman’s body is warm by default.
So I engineered an outfit.
Three layers on top. Two below.
A grey lace body with an underwire bra — unbelievably satisfying popper noises, everything held where it belongs. A lightweight black base-layer turtleneck. Then a deep red heat-gen thermal, thick, snug, round-necked, doing its job. Over that, a fitted grey wool/cashmere jumper to be thrown off before meetings.
On the bottom: 60-denier opaque black tights and ME+EM cigarette-cut trousers. Deep red lace-up leather brogues with a 1” heel — a man’s work shoe, essentially3.
Over it all, a black wool Gucci4 coat with ruffled edges and pearl buttons, doing the heavy lifting so the rest didn’t have to. Grey wool gloves with fur cuffs, and cream Arran bobble hat pulled down. Black umbrella.
Diamond earrings. Red nails. Bare makeup except a red lip. Unfussy.
Regulated enough not to be angry.
The cost was visibility. My shape was more on show than feels neutral in professional settings. Around me were people in sheer blouses, moving easily through the day like temperature was a suggestion. Sweet Jesus. How.
But I was warm. Not cosy. Enough.
Warm enough to think, to listen properly, to move through corridors without bracing myself. Warm enough to stay outward-facing.
This is the part no one says out loud:
professionalism relentlessly demands indifference to discomfort.
It trains the body to be ignored. Cold becomes etiquette.
The body becomes something you override so you don’t disturb the order of things.
The lighter the clothes in winter, the clearer the message: I follow rules.
I’m not interested in that performance.
I dress to stay cognitively intact. To remain in command of my attention. To work with my nervous system regulated and my thinking fully available.
If that means thermals under tailoring and a coat that establishes terms, so be it.
Freezing is not a professional virtue.
I’m not playing that game.
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tongue. cheek
Winter in the UK = December, January, February. What February does have is: more light, and the idea of spring (Imbolc, snowdrops, longer mornings).This is psychological thaw without physical relief.
clothes and shoes via Vinted or charity shops. new M&S tights
When I was coaching some guys saw it as a badge of honor and a display of toughness to not wear enough in the winter.
Not me! I’d wear every damn later I could get my hands on 🤣
Learnt on a health and safety course, the comfortable working temperature for sedentry/office work is 21 degrees C for men, 23 for women. And that's before the menopause messes with our internal thermostats....