DOW JONES, A NEWS CORP COMPANY
Sections
Aim higher, reach further.
Get the Wall Street Journal $12 for 12 weeks. Subscribe Now

Work Wear: Office Style at the New York Public Library

Kurt Wilberding/The Wall Street Journal

By Robin Kawakami
It’s not just ladies in sensible shoes and woolen cardigans who work at the New York Public Library. The private, non-profit organization has about 2,000 employees in 90 locations across the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, and office style ranges from bookish to whimsical.

“Some of my colleagues are from the ‘School of Librarian,’” said Sharon Hewitt Watkins, vice president of finance, wearing a bright green cocktail dress. “I love color. I love accessories.”

Shauntee Burns, a teaching and learning specialist, said: “I definitely like to look like a librarian, but I twist it with a pop of color, so it’s 21st-century librarian.” Jessica Pigza, assistant curator of rare books, added a homespun touch to her librarian look: She sewed her dress and wore it with a vintage shirt and black-frame glasses.

Employees involved in fundraising or special events—such as the “Live from the NYPL” speaker series, which features celebrity speakers like Jay-Z, Umberto Eco and Oliver Stone—tend to dress more formally.

Patrick Hoffman, director of the theatre on film and tape at the library for the performing arts, wears a suit and tie every day. “I’m a firm believer that good clothes open all doors,” he said.

See more examples of office style at the New York Public Library at Speakeasy.

Show More Archives
Advertisement

Popular on WSJ

Recommended

Fawning Over the Miniature Baby Deer Born at Queens Zoo
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/06/27/work-wear-office-style-at-the-new-york-public-library/
blogs.wsj.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-26
177217
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:2EAZMC5DB3FGTUS63JZK2HRHXVEBL4XS
<urn:uuid:35aafc7d-7a73-4132-adae-9ce9676b4e51>
2016-07-01T22:29:56Z
104.95.65.57
sha1:53RQGIQ477G7PJLS352UWPWAFTKKSHM2
<urn:uuid:cc7099ec-21fc-419d-8aa3-fab36e9155a3>
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/06/27/work-wear-office-style-at-the-new-york-public-library/
response
<urn:uuid:3026e26f-c0a0-4f45-8f97-ea39034fd85e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-26
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf