In ELLE.com’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke to Amy Smilovic, the founder and creative director of the New York-based fashion label Tibi. As the brains behind the brand, known for its effortlessly cool yet polished workwear pieces, Smilovic has developed a taste that appeals to working women across the country. Her clothes feel, at once, professional and expressive—appropriate for a boardroom but never boring. The designer has also taken it upon herself to share her relatable approach to personal style—through her book, The Creative Pragmatist, and her own TikToks—in the hopes that it will help others find their own. Below, she shares her thoughts on office dress codes, mastering commuter style, and her current “gaudy” closet must-haves.
My first job
I was an account executive at Ogilvy, working with American Express and Shoney’s restaurants. I was 21 and in charge of preparing briefs for the creative team, disseminating the clients’ requests, doing research, and helping bring the ad campaigns to life. I learned about how varied companies work, turning goals into ad strategies, and how to measure success.
My worst job
It was a job within a job at Ogilvy. I had to spray for bugs at a women’s penitentiary in Tampa, Florida, to write the advertising brief for the creative team. I was spraying for roaches in a maximum-security prison—and I was wearing shorts. It was bad from every angle. Plus, I had to drive in a car that had bug antennas on it—a giant bug car.
How I describe Tibi’s signature ethos
I wanted to give words to a style that was impossible to describe in one word. We’re in an industry where it’s very convenient to use one word to summarize your style: edgy, feminine, sexy, classic. I found that I was a little bit of most of that and none of some of it. “Creative pragmatism” is how I explain the ethos behind our design and also how we—and our clients—approach our style. It describes someone who dresses in a way that is highly creative yet functional and pragmatic at the same time. It’s the balance of both. Sometimes more of one and less of the other, but it always slides along that scale.
Why Tibi appeals to the multi-hyphenate working woman
For the first time, women are telling me they have clothes that represent who they are. They’ve experienced whiplash from all the trends: balletcore, normcore, what have you. With Tibi, they feel that someone who gets them is really speaking to them. It makes sense; we are them. We’re not trying to imagine what it means to work in a corporation, to have kids, to have multiple responsibilities. We are truly the embodiment of all those different things, and so it can’t help but come through our hands when we’re designing.
My philosophy on commuter style
My biggest thing is being appropriate in the environment that you’re in. If it’s snowing and raining out, I’m not going to wear an open-toe sandal. No matter what, you don’t feel chic when you are dressed inappropriately for the weather, the terrain, or even the customs of the area that you’re in. You don’t want to walk into a church in a red crop top; it’s nice to lean into who you are but still figure out ways to fit into different environments without blending in.
So, when I’m commuting, I love figuring out how to look chic but wear something that allows me to run through Grand Central Terminal and not slip and make an ass out of myself. I like being able to sit down on the subway seats and not freak out if something’s going to get on it. When you figure out how to work with the elements, instead of just trying to constantly buck them, that’s pretty cool.
How I think about dressing for the office
The No. 1 rule is to play within the guardrails—but do it in a way that makes you feel your strongest and your best. I’ve had a lot of shorter women tell me that they hate wearing high heels; they don’t feel like themselves. But they also hate being so much shorter than the men in their meetings. To me, the fact that you would choose height over not feeling like yourself is a bad choice. When you feel like yourself, that’s when you feel the most confident. It’s when you feel like you can really claw into an argument and have a good discourse. Showing up in a way that feels like yourself gives you that balance and ease to then get on with the actual business at hand.
On the “office siren” aesthetic and other workwear-inspired trends
If you really want to play and have fun with your style, go for it. Where I caution people is when there’s a trend that makes no sense to you or that you don’t agree with, but you feel compelled to embrace it because someone else is saying to. That’s the time to reject it. If you want to play “office siren,” be careful not to lock yourself into a certain persona you don’t want to be attached to in the long run. You have to be aware of that connection between what your visuals are saying, what your actions are communicating, and what your words are saying, and make sure that those three are linking up. In the office, if you want to get ahead, you need to recognize that those three triangulate with each other.
As for taking your workwear to after-hours events, I love the idea of people really bringing it into nighttime. It makes wearing the clothing in your closet around the clock more normal—and that’s always a good thing.
The benefit of connecting with our customers on TikTok
That direct line with our customers has been constantly bolstering our confidence that we are doing the right thing. Before TikTok and Instagram, we would try things, and you could look at sales to see that it’s going in the right direction. Now, when we’re getting feedback so early on from people about why they love it, why it’s changed their life, or how they’re using it in myriad ways, it fuels you to keep going—knowing that it will always work out if you just do what you love. It gives you the confidence to not overthink things.
Why I wrote The Creative Pragmatist
When we’re getting dressed, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of, “Oh, that neckline looks better on someone else,” or “That color complements her face better.” The reasons why things do or do not work are much deeper than that—and it is a very visceral feeling when something’s working or not. I wanted to unpack what that feeling was and codify it to help others.
I started explaining to customers why something is consistently not working for them—that they are missing the range of proportions on their body or that it’s not just about having a smaller waist. It’s about viewing things like a sculptor would. Explaining things in ways that aren’t so absolute allowed people to put their guards down, listen, and learn. It’s been a real eye-opener. Consider it like learning the basics of cooking, so you can go on and create your own recipes. We really focused on understanding the core ingredients and how they work together.
How I categorize my closet
“Without-fails” are the closet essentials—the foundation of the wardrobe. We have this Stella pant, which is this big, slouchy, easy pleated pant, and then any of our denim—I live in denim. Then, it’s always a blazer. They probably represent 60 percent of my closet, but I tell people not to get locked into the percentages; if you like tops, that should be represented the most in your closet.
My “in-and-outs” are things I’m interested in for a season or two before I put them away, and then later, I’ll bring them back out. Last year, they were things that were a little more ornamented and brighter in color. My “had-to-haves” have been pretty full-on gaudy. I bought a Rabanne bag, and it’s silver and gold with gigantic stars and moons. I also bought a pair of crystal Simone Rocha earrings; she’s done them in a mint green colorway, which was really interesting to me. And then I bought a really gross blue vintage slip skirt when I was in Antwerp this summer. These things remind me a little bit of the early Y2K fashion, but they are things I can mix in with my without-fails, and I can retain my identity without going full-on early aughts. The had-to-haves are joy when you want it—and in a few years, I might ask myself, “What the fuck was I thinking?”
On giving more to our customers while staying sustainable
There’s something nauseating about pure clothing. I think the only way to ever truly be sustainable is to stop making so much; people have to buy less. We want to figure out how to do more with less, so we launched our Tibi Creative Pragmatist Salon series, where we bring in two very interesting people who, on the surface, seem very different but share a similar mindset. If our “more” can be these incredible discussions, that’s amazing. I love that we figured out how to grow our brand without it necessarily needing to become 10 million T-shirts.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dale Arden Chong is the senior fashion commerce editor at ELLE.com, where she edits and reports on the latest trends, labels, and designers in the fashion space to bring you the best items that will elevate your wardrobe. With a passion for great sartorial stories and getting dressed (as well as a knack for nerding out over the details), she has a robust knowledge of high-quality design, construction, and materials based on testing hundreds of products over her eight-plus years in the industry, writing stories for Glamour, Who What Wear, Entertainment Tonight, and others. So, if you ask her for a shopping recommendation, she’ll give you five picks plus her honest, unfiltered opinions. Dale graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Communication Design. In 2015, she was a finalist for the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award in the Online category of “Commentary/Analysis/Trend” for her article “Calvin Klein Underwear: What Is Plus Size?” Outside of the style world, her hobbies include cooking, playing tennis, ceramics, and watching BTS dance videos on YouTube, among other things. Follow her on Instagram at @dalearden.