Is this outfit too much for the office?

[BlueMaya]

Is this too much to wear to the office? I wore it with a belt so wondering if I was over dressed?

thankfully Zara do not sell lab or factory worker coats, so I have no concerns I looked like either worker ☺️

It's a lovely dress, albeit a tad medical - but with a belt and jewellery with decent shoes it would look pretty stylish, you look fabulous in it. As a dyspraxic though I would be covered in everything I ate, ink, oil and any other dirt I walked past 😀

Definitely don’t think it’s too much for work.

I hope you weren’t doing anything important in a lab because your perception/sense of the bleeding obvious seems woefully inadequate. Maybe you breathed in some fumes?

I think the brightly coloured plastic bead necklace suggestion was a joke in terms of wearing 80s styling. Personally I would wear tan or navy accessories but I prefer low-key and find black and white is often a difficult
look to get right. I thought the dress was linen, and I do like a long linen shirt dress with sleeves rolled up and the skirt unbuttoned, as a casual holiday look .

And it’s interesting that technical fabrics used in sports clothing that are meant to wick sweat and keep you cool are all man made.

Yes, a djellaba was my first thought.

I talk about "going to the office" to mean "going to my place of employment".

Prince Philip used "the office" to mean Buckingham Palace.

I think another poster mentioned dyspraxia. I'm autistic, which means that I have sub-clinical dyspraxic tendencies too. It manifests as being prone to dropping things and unable to catch any object thrown at me. So yes, I spill food a lot.

White and navy don't go together unless your job title is “able seaman".

You're right that black on white is a bit too high-contrast. It wouldn't occur to me to suggest brown because it is barred from my wardrobe, all shades make me look ill.

• Having huge tits, I don't wear shirt dresses. I have little experience of even seeing shirt dresses. So I saw a white long button-fronted garment and thought "lab coat".
• I once mistook a denim long-sleeved jumpsuit in Tesco for female-cut mechanics' overalls and bought them, thinking "finally, someone is doing a women's cut in these". Reader, they were meant as a fashion item. Distinguishing between, for example, "fashion" cargo trousers and the kind you'd wear on a building site is hard for me. This doesn't prevent me from doing my job, because I don't work as a fashion retailer's buyer.

I have bought "Work Wear" branded female-fit proper building site cargo trousers with knee pockets for pads, dresses, socks, underwear, PJs, and sportswear, all from the middle aisle of Lidl.

Given that, why would I assume that Zara couldn't possibly stock lab coats, building site appropriate cargos, mechanics' overalls, or any other type of vocational garment?

I think your ignorance is performative, but on the off chance you really do struggle - never even seen a shirt dress, unable to distinguish between functional and fashion items - why are you on a board about Style & Beauty?

And pontificating that
White and navy don't go together unless your job title is “able seaman". That's Princess Kate told then.

I find it hard to believe anyone seriously thinks Zara stocks lab coats, building site appropriate cargos and mechanics' overalls. Or that what the poster bought in Tesco wasn't just a fashion item.

I'm on the board because I do know about bra fitting and specialist labels for the larger busted.

I didn't claim "never" to have seen a shirt dress, but to have never worn one and rarely seen them. The reason why I have never worn one is because I have huge tits! This is a family trait, so none of my relatives wear them either, hence why I have rarely seen them.

But why try to rebutt what I actually said when you can lie about me?

Trinny and Susannah, What You Wear Can Change Your Life, page 68: "At all costs, avoid the cliché of dark blue with white -- unless you're actually planning to weigh anchor and set sail."

Princess Catherine wears hats everywhere and isn't allowed out in public without tights on under her skirt. She's dressing to a very conservative brief that most women won't need nor want to adhere to. Navy and white is a cliché, one associated with uniforms and extremely conservative dressing.

When the middle of Lidl stocks both dresses and workwear, why wouldn't anywhere else? Especially Tesco, who are a supermarket just like Lidl are. The jumpsuit looked exactly like the men's mechanic's overalls I already have, bar for having a tie belt. Blue denim is just a slightly coarser version of the blue twill overalls are made of: I know this because I sew!

The OP's first photo wasn't close-up enough nor clear enough for me to see that the fabric was crêpe. If I'd seen that, I wouldn't have made the error, as I clarified in my reply to the photo of her wearing it.

why are you on a board about Style & Beauty?

And also, this thread was in my Trending. I don't have S&B in my "feed" or whatever MN calls the list of boards I follow. "I'm on the board" would be more accurately stated as "I don't refrain from posting in S&B".

Trinny and Susanah frequently spout utter rubbish. I wouldn't take style advice from them.

There was a thread about cardigans reappeared. You're the poster who thought long coats had gone out of fashion because cars were invented so I wouldn't be taking style advice from you either.

I cant even understand why anyone would think Zara had a sideline in lab protection. Or why Tesco would have a random rail of mechanic overalls in the F&F section

Agree with the pp who said the ignorance is absolutely performative. I work with someone whos pulls this stunt (not quite as try hard/obvious about it though) thinking it makes her look all whimsical and quirky. Its really tedious.

I don’t know why you keep mentioning your tits, no-one asked or is interested in them.

I simply don’t believe anyone with a passing interest in clothing who claims to be unable to recognise a shirt dress because they’ve never worn one, and neither have their family. You’re being pointlessly obtuse and it’s really quite boring.

Because I've bought proper building site type combats for women in the middle of Lidl, which is where Lidl keep the clothes, just as F&F is where Tesco keep the clothes.

If you knew the first thing about Zara, you'd know that Zara originated what we now call "fast fashion".

They specialise in trying a short run of something to see if it sells, then ramping up to meet demand. The question, in the case of Zara, isn't "why would they try a lab coat?" but "why wouldn't they?"

This wasn't just any shirt dress, was it? It was a shirt dress without a waist line.

You asked me why I post here. Now you complain because I explained why. Make your mind up what you want.

I didn't actually say that. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/style_and_beauty/5510995-are-cardigans-really-a-fashion-mistake-or-still-practical-for-summer-layering?postsby=selffellatingouroborosofhate is my posts on that thread. I said that I'd stopped wearing long coats. I also said that "We all stopped wearing big hats because of cars becoming commonplace". Big hats! Not long coats!

It's pretty rich to accuse me of feigning ignorance when you are provably lying about what I said.

My knowledge of fashion has gaps in it. I bothered to learn about the stuff I can actually wear and not waste time on the rest.

Being unable to recognise a waistless shirt dress in white in a poor-resolution photograph as not being a lab coat, when half the posters on this thread who knew it was a dress thought it looked enough like a labcoat to joke about it, turns out to be a symptom of one of those gaps.

Gorgeous dress!