What to Wear to the Office in Lagos
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Freezing indoors, thirty-three degrees outside, and something after work you cannot go home to change for.
Sunday night, and you are already thinking about what to wear on Monday. Not because you have nothing, but because the office is set to sixteen degrees, the walk from the car park is not, and there is a thing on Thursday evening you will be going to straight from work.
Office dressing here has to solve three problems at once, and most advice only deals with one of them.
The standard is higher than people admit
Corporate Lagos is not casual. Even in offices that say they are, there is an understood line, and the people who get taken seriously tend to sit on the right side of it without making a performance of it.
It is also not the same as looking formal. A well cut dress reads as more considered than a suit that does not fit, and most people can tell the difference immediately even if they could not explain it.
A dress is easier than separates
One decision instead of three. You are not standing there working out whether the top goes with the skirt at six in the morning.
A midi dress with a defined waist does most of the work on its own. Add a blazer when you need to look more senior, take it off when you do not. That is the whole system and it holds up across most Lagos offices.
The air conditioning problem
Offices here are cold. Properly cold, for hours, while it is hot enough outside that you cannot dress for the office temperature and survive the journey.
Which means the layer is not optional. A blazer, a cardigan, something that lives on the back of your chair. Sleeveless dresses work well precisely because of this, since you control the warmth rather than being stuck with whatever the dress decided.
Closed shoes for the same reason. Open shoes in a cold office is a specific kind of misery.
Length, sleeves and necklines
Midi is the most useful thing you can own for work, because it is appropriate in any office and you never have to think about how you are sitting.
Sleeveless is fine with a layer over it. A higher neckline reads as more professional than a lower one, and a dress you are adjusting during a meeting is a dress you will stop wearing.
Office to evening without going home
This is the part that decides which dress you actually reach for. Between traffic and the distance most people travel, going home to change is rarely realistic.
So the dress needs to hold. Blazer off, swap the flats for heels you kept in your bag, better earrings, and a different lip. Same dress, and nobody at the dinner is thinking about your day.
What makes that possible is restraint. A dress that is loudly corporate cannot go to dinner and a dress that is loudly evening cannot go to a meeting. The one that does both is quieter than either, and it is the one that ends up being worn twice a week.
Building a working week
Three or four dresses covers most people. Two you can wear with a blazer, one that is comfortable enough for a long day at a desk, one that can carry an evening if the day turns into one.
Change the shoes and the jewellery through the week and it stops reading as a rotation. At AMARAÉ this is the thinking behind most of the collection, because the customers we design for are not going home in between things.
The Baobab Set gives you two pieces you can wear apart, which quietly doubles what you can get out of one purchase.
Shop AMARAÉ for dresses that handle a Lagos working day. Delivery across Nigeria and worldwide.
Read next: What to Wear to Dinner in Lagos