Shorts are big for spring and remained a hot item on New York’s runways this Fashion Week. The front row of Philip Lim’s women’s show contained plenty of hot pants. But are they work-appropriate? “It depends on who you’re trying to pull, really, isn’t it? If you want to impress your boss, I’d say yeah, they look great!” Alexa Chung said. Elle creative director Joe Zee agreed. “I love the shorts trend. All the Elle girls wear shorts to the office all the time, even in the winter, with tights and boots. And in the summer, they wear them with flat sandals, or even a heel,” he said.
So shorts are office-approved? “In our office, yeah!” But there’s a time and a place, he added: “If you’re a lawyer in your 40s, you shouldn’t really be wearing shorts to the office. There’s a level of decorum, I think.” Being Zee, he was quick to provide his useful rule of thumb: “You want to treat shorts the same way that you would treat a skirt. You would never wear a skirt at a dangerously short length, and so you shouldn’t do that with shorts.” His former Elle co-worker Nina Garcia, now of Marie Claire, disagreed somewhat: “Unless they’re longer shorts, kind of Bermuda shorts, then I think you can pull them off. But short shorts, for the office, I still don’t think it’s okay, not even for a fashion-magazine editor.”
