Addressed: How to Dress When It's Hot Outside and Freezing in Your Office

Vogue

19-06-2025

Welcome to Addressed, a weekly column where we, ahem, address the joys (and tribulations!) of getting dressed. So far we've unpacked how to wear shorts at the office and beyond, how to pack a carry-on bag for a work trip, how to dress with style in your third trimester, and even how to layer without looking like that chair in your room (you know the one). Download the Vogue app and find our Style Advice section to submit your question.
In the past few weeks, multiple coworkers have sent me the same message on Slack. 'Hey, I have a question for Addressed: How do I dress for the office when it's really hot outside and very cold inside?' With the weather forecast in New York pointing to a heat wave—temps may reach 103 degrees (that's 39 degrees for our Celsius friends)—now feels like the right time to figure out what to do about the ultra-humid muggy days to come. You know, the ones when you can feel your sweat-soaked T-shirt (sorry) turn into an icicle after 10 minutes of sitting at your computer.
There are a couple ways to get around this, depending on the severity of the heat and the humidity (it's always the humidity!) outside. First: If you have a desk at your office, you should always keep a sweater on hand (or a jacket if you want something more formal) that you can drape over your shoulders or wear across your lap as a blanket when you start getting chilly. You could, of course, carry a sweater in your bag everyday, but I tend to find that when it's really hot, toting a lot of things—whether they're heavy or not—only makes you feel hotter.
Second: Consider wearing a base layer. Yes, even in July or August, when the whole city feels like a brick-oven pizzeria, there is layering to be done. A foundational piece will (again, I'm sorry) absorb your perspiration so you don't find yourself holding on to the pole on a downtown 1 train, a bead of sweat trailing down your calf, past your ankle, and into your shoe (it happened to me). I'll usually wear a Hanes tank top (I buy a pack of them in a youth XL so that they're tight-fitting and not too long), but I imagine that Uniqlo's Airism tanks would be an even better solution. I recently discovered that they also make Airism biker shorts. I guess technically they're 'shapers,' but they look light enough to wear underneath skirts and dresses, especially if your thighs chafe in the summer. (My chafe hack is to rub deodorant on my thighs. I learned this in an old issue of Jane magazine where exotic dancers offered beauty advice, and they said deodorant helped them avoid ingrown hairs. The more you know!)
When things really get too hot to handle, we can look to 1980s working girls for inspiration. Tess McGill, if you'll recall, wore white sneakers and scrunchy socks and swapped them for pumps once she stepped off the Staten Island Ferry. The 2025 equivalent could be as simple as wearing a T-shirt or a tank top to and from work, and switching to a blouse; or wearing some nu-metal shorts and swapping them for a slinky silk skirt when you get into the office (a great way to avoid sweat stains, etc.). Now, I know this goes against my first rule of 'carrying unnecessary stuff,' but when it gets really steamy, you do what you have to do. When all else fails, buy one of those chic little battery-operated fans and remember how miserable you were in the middle of February when the snow days seemed like they were never going to end (and it was too hot in your office, to boot).