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Getting dressed for work in the morning can be complicated. Gone are the days of the office dress code. While most of us are happy that our bosses no longer dictate that we wear collared shirts, heels, or shift dresses to work, this means the burden of figuring out what is appropriate now lies squarely on our shoulders. As corporate culture has become increasingly more relaxed, with denim often replacing trousers, finding the right balance between formal and casual can be tricky. If you show up to work in a three-piece suit, you might look like you don’t understand your company’s values. But if you wear your favorite baggy jeans, you might come off as unserious. And looking out of place can have negative consequences on your career. Citizens of Humanity, a denim label, and Argent, a workwear brand, are deeply familiar with this sartorial confusion. Both brands regularly field questions about how to put together an outfit that will allow someone to look polished but also creative and unpretentious. “This is not a trivial issue,” says Sali Christeson, Argent’s founder and CEO. “Our goal is to make sure that women show up to work feeling confident, so they can do good work.” The brands have joined forces to create a Citizens of Humanity x Argent collection of garments called “Good Work” that epitomizes the modern work wardrobe. Thanks to Citizens of Humanity’s expertise, it is full of denim pieces that are elevated and elegant, telegraphing professionalism. But taken as a whole, the capsule is meant to be versatile, helping the wearer transition from formal moments to casual ones, since work today often requires moving between diverse environments. “With these pieces, we’re trying to give women a formula for getting dressed for the many different parts of their work life, which could mean going from a board meeting to a creative brainstorm in a single day,” says Amy Williams, Citizens of Humanity’s CEO. The pieces in this collection offer a useful blueprint for how to style denim for the office today. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] Consider The Cut and Color Jeans have become an office staple, but the key to finding the appropriate pair for a given occasion depends on the cut and rinse. If you’re anxious about appearing too casual, one good solution is to find jeans that are cut like traditional suiting trousers. For this collection, Citizens of Humanity developed a pair called the Beverly Trouser made from non-stretch denim that has an elegant drape and a wide leg silhouette. It comes in two shadesvery dark blue and whitethat also give them a more formal look, since they are reminiscent of traditional suiting. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] But there are moments when you might deliberately want to look more relaxed. In Williams’s case, this might be when she’s working with her designers or creative teams, who tend to dress more casually. So Citizens of Humanity has included the Ayla jeans in this collection. These are baggier than the Beverly, with a roomy leg that can be cuffed to give them more structure or left to pool a little to give them a more laid-back look. To give the outfit a more polished look, Williams says you might wear them with, say, a button-down shirt or a waistcoat. (The Good Work capsule includes a black one.) [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] Consider Denim Dresses and Skirts One way to bring denim into office wear is to go beyond the jean altogether, and consider other kinds of garments. The Citizens of Humanity x Argent capsule includes the Farrow Denim Dress, which has a structured fit that accentuates the waist and buttons that go down the entire front. Another material, such as crepe, might make the outfit look more prim, but denim fabrication offers versatility. You could wear the dress with a blazer to the office, and wear it on its own for a more casual lunch or dinner. The Gwynn denim skirt is similarly versatile. It comes in a dark wash and reaches the calf, a length that is work appropriate. But it also has a stylish slit in the front, that also makes it easier to walk around in. The skirt can be easily dressed up or down. With a button-down, you could wear this to meet with a client; with a tank top, you could wear it on a casual Friday. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] What About Denim Jackets and Shirts? If you’ve been used to wearing blazers to the office, but find that they’re increasingly feeling too formal, a good swap could be a denim jacket. For the Citizens of Humanity x Argent collection, the two brands developed the Abra Work Jacket, a silhouette that is in vogue. It comes in a dark indigo rinse, which is reminiscent of a traditional navy blazer. But the denim material and the contrast stitching makes it undeniably inspired by heavy-duty workwear. The jacket front also has staggered patch pockets, which transform it into a statement piece. And if you feel like your traditional Oxford button-down shirt makes you look too dressy, you might consider replacing it with a denim shirt. The Harris shirt in this collection is oversize, with a high low hemline. Williams points out that there are many ways to wear this piece. You can layer it over a tank top. You can pair it with trousers. Or, if you want to stand out, you could wear it with jeans to create a full denim look. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] What if I want to be more dressy, but not too formal? The Citizens of Humanity x Argent capsule is designed to have an outfit for every occasion, including more formal ones. Here’s where Argent’s expertise comes in. For this collection, Argent reimagined one of its suits, comprised of its Chelsea blazer and Park trousers, in a denim blue linen. Both the material and the color give the suit a more breezy feel that allows you to blend seamlessly into relaxed or formal scenarios. Another way to dress up without looking overly starchy is to swap a blazer for a waistcoat. Argent designed a linen twill waistcoat in black that you can pair with matching black trousers or shorts. It comes with a matching blazer that can elevate the look, so you can wear the entire three-piece suit to a talk or a board meeting, then remove the blazer for date night.
Category:
E-Commerce
[Photo: Cubitts] Tom Broughton, the founder of the British eyewear brand Cubitts that has recently landed in the U.S., wants to make you a set of glasses that you’ll be able to wear your entire life. “They could outlive you,” he says. That’s a radical notion these days. Over the past three decades, as fast fashion has become the norm, the price of eyewear has come down alongside the price of clothes and shoes. Brands like Zenni and Warby Parker market their glasses as a fashion statement that is so affordable, you can change them up whenever you want. You could wear a different pair every day of the week. Broughton finds this approach to eyewear problematic for many reasons. For one thing, 250 metric tons of eyewear ends up in landfills every year, by some estimates. This is an environmental catastrophe since most eyewear today is made of acetate, a kind of plastic that will not biodegrade and contribute to the microplastics crisis. But more broadly, as a lover of glasses (or spectacles, as he calls them) he believes glasses have a way of expressing your identity and shaping how you appear to the world, so there is something beautiful about having a pair that lasts your life. With Cubitts, Broughton is trying to bring this philosophy to life. The company has a more laborious handmade process than its competitors, to create a more durable pair of glasses, and each frame comes with a lifetime of servicing and repair. Now the company is doubling down on this approach by allowing customers to create custom lenses that are personalized to the shape of their face, ensuring that they are perfectly suited to a lifetime of wear. Customers can now get a fitting for custom lenses in store, and the company is also developing an app that will collect customer measurements digitally so they can create custom frames online. The app will be released in the next few months. [Photo: Cubitts] A Spectacles Historian In his early teens, Broughton became obsessed with eyewear. More specifically, he fell in love with the rock star Morrissey’s glasses. In the 1980s, Morrissey, the lead singer of the iconic band The Smiths, wore large black frames that Broughton found irresistible. So Broughton got himself a pair of similar frames and wore them proudly to school, even when chunky frames weren’t yet popular. “I remember turning up to school in them when I was 14,” he says. “I felt like I was the coolest person ever, rightly or wrongly. Maybe people were laughing at me behind my back.” In his late teens and early twenties, Broughton became fascinated with the history of spectacles. He began collecting old pairs he found at antique shops, and learning as much as he could about them. This history made him long for the days when a pair of glasses was a valuable possession that people cherished throughout their life. [Photo: Cubitts] For much of human history, there was no way to correct poor eyesight, so many people went through life with blurry vision, unable to fully take in the world around them. Then, over the course of the last two millennia, inventors discovered that they could use crystal, polished quarts, or glass globes to magnify text. In the 1200s, Europeans developed the first eyeglasses made of quartz, framed in wood that you could hold up to your face to see things more clearly. Throughout the Renaissance, scientists continued developing spectacles to correct vision, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that they developed a pair with arms that would rest over the ears, making them more stable and hands-free. But until very recently, corrective glasses were very expensive. Even a century ago, when they were widespread, most people only had a single pair they would wear over the course of a lifetime. “Their spectacles were a precious, life-changing tool,” Broughton says. “But their spectacles also became associated with them and how they presented themselves to the world.” This is no longer the case. Eyewear is now very inexpensive to produce. Companies realized they could make spectacles out of plastic, which is a very cheap material. And since the 1980s, most of the world’s eyewear has been mass-produced in China, where labor is inexpensive. Now you can now get a pair for as little as $30. And while Broughton thinks it is wonderful that corrective eyewear has been democratized, so that everybody who needs it can now get it, it’s possible that the industry has swung too far, transforming glasses into something that is disposable. “We’ve stopped seeing spectacles as the incredible invention that they are,” he says. [Photo: Cubitts] Spectacles That Last a Lifetime Broughton hadn’t planned on becoming an entrepreneur. He studied behavioral economics and applied statistics, and eventually worked at Spotify. But in his spare time, he continued to pursue his passion for spectacles. He learned how to craft frames out of acetate and metal by hand, and began creating spectacles for his friends. “I would cycle around London with little measuring tools, knock on people’s doors and take their measurements,” he says. In 2012, while he was still at his day job, he launched Cubitts, creating custom lenses. The business quickly took off. Even though there are many competing eyewear brands on the market, people seemed to like Broughton’s approach that treated spectacles as something special. His customers took a long time to choose the perfect frames that they felt reflected who they were and how they wanted to appear to the world. Cubitts launched online and opened its first store in King’s Cross in London. The company also came to the United States, opening two stores in New York last year. The brand is known for its chunky, statement-making glasses, in the vein of the pair Morrissey wore, and they aren’t very expensive. The average Cubitts pair costs $200. Through its branding, the company emphasizes that even though the glasses are stylish, they’re not meant to be trendy. Throughout the store and the website, Cubitts makes it clear that the eyewear is meant to last a lifetime. The company makes each pair by hand using a lengthier process than its competitors, including using parts that are easier to replace if they break. For instance, it uses a premium hinge that connects the frame to the arm (that goes behind the ear) that makes it easier to fix. Cubitts has a policy of offering a lifetime of repairs, rehabs, and reglazing of their frames. When a prescription changes, they put in new lenses for free (many retailers offer this service, for a fee). [Photo: Cubitts] But Broughton believes that creating eyewear that lasts a lifetime isn’t just about durability. It’s also about helping customers find a pair that they love and that fits them perfectly. Cubitts offers each pair of glasses in small, medium, and large sizes to fit faces of different sizes. But the company is now investing in technology to create custom frames that are perfectly suited to the customers’ face. The company has developed a system that allows customers to come into the store to take measurements of their face, identifying everything from the size of their nose to the shape of their face to the distance to how far back their ears are. (The company is also working on an app that will allow people to take these measurements at home, so they can create custom frames virtually. This is likely to roll out in the next year or so.) Then, when the customer pick a style of lenses they like, Cubitts will custom-make them to suit their facial proportion. He’s found that this has been particularly appealing to Black and asian customers who sometimes struggle to find eyewear that fits the dimensions of their face, since most eyewear is designed around caucasian features. But all customers, regardless of ethnicity, like being able to find a pair that can be designed to look perfectly suited to their faces, so they are aesthetically pleasing and also don’t pinch the nose or the ears. Ultimately, Broughton hopes that this technology makes customers love their spectacles even more, and want to hold on to them for longer. And even though Broughton himself has access to an endless supply of different frames, and is sometimes tasked with testing out different models, he generally sticks to a round frame he has become attached to. “I’ve become rather attached to my spectacles,” he says. “They’re part of me now.”
Category:
E-Commerce
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump made multiple promises to lower energy prices and electricity bills for Americans, but 100 days into his second term, energy prices are upand expected to keep increasing. Experts say Trumps energy policieslike inhibiting renewables, canceling federal energy assistance programs, and enacting widespread tariffsare to blame. Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months, Trump said in August. Energy is going to bring us back. That means were going down and getting gasoline below $2 a gallon, bring down the price of everything from electricity rates to groceries, he said in September. (Though at times he did hedge: If it doesnt work out, he also said in August, youll say, oh well, I voted for him and he still got it down a lot.) At the 100-day mark, though, average gas and electricity prices are up, some Americans have already seen their energy bills increase, and theres potential for much more harm, says Charles Harper, senior policy lead for the power sector at Evergreen Action. Average prices are upand Trump policies will raise them more Trump recently claimed that gas prices dipped below $2 a gallon in some states, but thats not true. The national average price of gas is currently $3.17 a gallon, 5 cents higher than a month agoand tariffs are set to spike gas prices soon. U.S. refineries make gasoline from crude oil, which is produced here but also importedpredominantly from Canada and Mexico. The U.S. imports about 4 million barrels of Canadian oil per day. (We also import what’s called “finished motor gasoline” from other countries, primarily Canada.) Average electricity prices are also up, to $0.181 per kilowatt per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thats a slight uptick from both January and February, and the highest price on record. Though Trump ran on a platform of energy dominance and unlocking American energy, Harper notes, he hypocritically has tried to kill some forms of energy that are the lowest cost. Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity to build, and also the fastest to deploy. Yet Trump has taken aim at these energy sources, suspending funding for clean energy projects and issuing orders to stop projects already underway, including for an offshore wind farm that would power more than 500,000 New York homes. In a list of energy resources he says we need to increase, Trump specifically excluded wind, solar, and battery power. Trump cut low-income energy assistance In the first 100 days of Trumps second term, low-income Americans, in particular, have been hit with extra energy charges because of his actions. When Trump paused funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as part of his Unleashing American Energy executive order, that affected the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps more than 6 million low-income households across the country cover their energy bills. Without those funds, about 2,000 low-income households in Alabama saw an immediate $100 added to their utility bills, in just one example. By April, states were missing out on about $400 million in LIHEAP funding that had yet to be distributed by the federal government. Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired LIHEAPs staff as they try to kill the program entirely. Thats expected to raise energy bills for millions of Americans, meaning low-income households will be less able to pay those bills, or less likely to adequately heat and cool their homes. Previous cuts to LIHEAP have seen these effects play out. In 2023, Congress cut $2 billion from LIHEAPs budget, and utility debt increased by 8.4% over the next year; 22% of households also kept their homes at unsafe temperatures in 2024, compared to 19.8% the year prior. Tariffs will keep increasing gas and electricity costs Trumps tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada arent only affecting consumer goods; theyll also raise energy prices. Just how much depends on where you live, but Midwest states are expected to be hit the hardest. Trump enacted a 10% tariff on Canadian energy imports and 25% on Mexican energy imports, which could raise gas prices by as much as 50 cents per gallon for people in the Midwest, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Canada and Mexico supply more than 71% of crude oil to U.S. refineries across the country (nearly 60% of all U.S. crude oil imports come from Canada alone). Canada has also threatened retaliatory tariffs, including a 25% surcharge on electricity sold to Michigan, Minnesota, and New York. Tariffs on steel and aluminum could also make new grid infrastructure and energy projects more expensive. Trumps push for fossil fuels may backfire Much of Trumps campaign promises and early term actions aim to increase fossil fuel production. But that wont necessarily help energy prices or U.S. households energy billsor even fossil fuel companies themselves. Trump has said he wants to bring back retired coal plants, but those plants closed because they were no longer economically viable. Putting them back online would be an expensive undertaking that would also increase electricity prices once theyre up and running. Trump has also looked to increase exports of liquified natural gas (LNG), and has approved licenses for new LNG projects. But increasing LNG exports actually increases domestic energy prices. Because that natural gas is being sold abroad, it makes it subject to global price fluctuations, and means exports aren’t addressing local demand. (When Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, European countries bought more LNG from the U.S., sending prices skyrocketing for Louisiana residents.) Thanks to rampant tax breaks, LNG projects can also cost local communities millions of dollars. Trumps actions have further increased uncertainty for fossil fuel companies. He has aimed to boost fossil fuel production by fast-tracking the approval process for new projects, and has said he wants oil prices to drop to $50 a barrelbut that price is considered too low to be profitable. Oil and gas companies arent clamoring to drill both because they dont want to overproduce and flood the market, and because fears of a recession are causing uncertainty about the future. This Drill, baby, drill agenda his administration has been pushing is not bearing out in practice, Harper says. Many oil and gas companies benefit from a lower supply of energy and corresponding higher prices because they have higher profit margins on every barrel of oil that they sell, and they are really resistant to increasing production. Oil and natural gas, including LNG exports, are both global markets that are subject to the whims of other countries and global demands, Harper adds. That means its impossible to isolate America from global price volatility. Clean energy could be a different story, because it’s generated domesticallybut as previously noted, Trump is hampering clean energy projects rather than pursuing them. All of these actions will only continue to raise energy prices for Americans, Harper saysand, he notes, theyre also all self-inflicted wounds done by the new administration.
Category:
E-Commerce
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