My recent incursion into the workforce has rendered me confused as to what exactly constitutes business attire in architecture. With no enforced dress code, the firm I have been working for in the past months continues to surprise me each week, with its similarity to the casualness of a Silicon Valley start-up (though, with the unfortunate exclusion of the free beer, massages and laundry pickup).

However, the spectacle of free company t-shirts has now been replaced by women in often awkwardly sculptural shoes and clothing, while the men attempt to relay the amount of time they have worked here through the tightness of their pants. But, even as the prevailing and hackneyed stereotype of the architect as the (wo)man who equates black ensembles and eccentric eyeglasses with degree of skill haunts the design industry like an unsatisfied apparition, it cannot be put to rest.

I should have known since my first interview that obvious social hierarchies of fashion would not exist in design, let alone architecture. Power suits custom-tailored in Hong Kong and leather Italian shoes do not equate dominance and supremacy here at work, but rather a sign of another identity that simply refuses to exist. Unfortunately, following my father’s advice on workplace fashion (this is the man who avidly embraces the intoxicating freedoms of “Casual Fridays” with the cartoon neckties he has accumulated over the years from clearance department store sales), I arrived my first day decked out in proper business attire for secretarial women from the 1970s —better known as a skirted suit, tailored blouse, and embarrassingly low black heels.

While this would have flown at Goldman (Oh my! Imagine the possibilities with feminine power structures conveyed through fashion!), I stood out like a sore thumb as I moved mass en-route from the subway stop to the elevator of my building, a haven for design firms and fledgling professionals. My tour through my prospective firm left me even more vulnerable and itching to grab the nearest x-acto knife to deconstruct my outfit into something more geometrical and slightly less corporate. As sleep-deprived workers turned their heads to catch a glimpse of my overly starched button down, I felt like a newly captured animal being paraded in front of her captors. Suddenly, my string of pearls did not seem so classic, but appeared to strangle my neck as a deep crimson crept up my face. That day, I learned nothing about interview etiquette, but quite a bit about a non-verbal culture — one that associates fashion with success, ego and reputation.

As each week passes, the trendy sea of black in which I fight to stay afloat becomes overwhelmingly eternal. Clicking away on the computer, I cannot help but martyr myself like Peter from Office Space. Though the place lacks agonizing inspirational posters and cubicles of standard grey dimensions, I am still trapped in another monotony of supposed difference: each individual in my firm is a resilient testament to the industry, as our ideologies have suddenly become materialized in our clothing. And so I cannot help but think of what got lost in translation from the liberal attitudes of university dress and expression to the now, at times, stifled work place. Despite the absence of proper work pants or pencil skirt, I still adhere to another dress code of “creativity,” whether that be a flamboyant necklace that alludes to modernist sculpture or a complicated, tailored jacket that makes me uncomfortably sweat when put on a deadline. Over the years, we went from plaid school uniforms in our elementary years to the (hopefully) bra-free, hippie-like days in our college years, and have now reverted back to another uniform — whether that be the power suit or in my case, the blackout, “non-traditional” ensemble. Was there always a quota for freedom?

As we (meaning I) transition into the adult world, it seems as if we are called upon to have more costume changes than we did while playing make-believe as children. I wear a particular outfit to go out at night versus to go to school versus to go to work. In this sense, fashion is not only a statement, but a declaration of credibility as well. Hence the standardized, unspoken dress codes of each workplace that attempt to fabricate singular identities: Finance’s suit and button-down convey power and professionalism, while architecture’s clean black lines of fabric supposedly convey good design and some sort of legitimacy as an individual (or provide a stable backdrop for a colorful model).

I, like many others, hope to qualify for decency and acceptance in a nice dress and killer boots, as I unsurely straddle two realms of young professionalism and downright youth. For now, I can only speculate that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Increasingly, though, I find myself judging more than ever — the paradox of the first appearance being that it is, for the most part, painfully true.