The Jumbo Glasses for Work...
There’s a new styling reflex dominating influencer “workwear” content: when an outfit isn’t quite landing — maybe it’s too casual, too flat, too normcore, too Sunday-errands — they throw on a pair of jumbo, thick-rimmed, often tinted, ’70s-adjacent glasses and suddenly declare it “a look.”
It’s the fashion equivalent of adding an exclamation mark to a sentence that had no energy in the first place.
These glasses aren’t being used as eyewear. They’re being used as performance enhancers — props that instantly inject “fashion credibility” into an outfit that doesn’t actually have much going for it. It works online because oversized glasses read as intentional; they signal “I know trends,” even when the rest of the look is an unremarkable hoodie, sweater, or basic coat. In fact, for OOO they’re an easy way to feel a tad more put together running errands. They generate the illusion of a fully styled outfit with pretty much anything (try them with your weekend sweatpants and hoodie, and you’re ready to go).
But here’s the letdown: viewers walk away from a “What I wore to work” post believing the outfit itself is doing the work. It isn’t. The glasses are. But take the glasses off — as one would in any real professional environment — and what’s left?
A commuter outfit.
A school drop-off outfit.
A weekend stroll outfit.
Not a workplace outfit.
So the glasses become a form of styling inflation: they artificially elevate a look that doesn’t translate to actual office settings. The glasses are doing all the lifting — not the tailoring, the proportions, the materials, the structure, the silhouette, or even the other accessories.
The result is misleading inspiration for women genuinely trying to understand how to build a powerful, credible, modern work wardrobe. If the goal is the fashion lift the glasses are pretending to provide, here’s what works in the real world:
A sharply cut blazer with real architecture
Thoughtful layering instead of accidental layering (hoodies don’t count)
Textures with intent (flannel, double-faced wool, twill)
Modern but office-appropriate accessories
Sharp shoes
These moves elevate an outfit because they transform the outfit itself, not because they distract from it. When a look needs a pair of enormous tinted lenses to feel “fashion,” the outfit is telling you something: It isn’t built, it’s embellished.
And that is why this belongs squarely in The Letdowns — the category for styling tactics for “workwear” that collapse the moment you remove the one gimmick propping them up.
