NEW YORK Debrahlee Lorenzana likes to dress sharp when she goes to work - she is a fan of Burberry and Hermes and has five closets. What the New York banker hadn't anticipated was that in some workplaces, looking good can earn you the sack.

Lorenzana claims in a sex discrimination lawsuit filed with the Manhattan supreme court that her employer, Citibank, dismissed her, in part because her figure and her clothes were “too distracting” for her male colleagues. She claims that soon after she joined as a banking adviser in September 2008 she was subjected to comments about her appearance.

Documents lodged with the court claim two of her immediate bosses told her to stop wearing turtleneck tops, pencil skirts or fitted business suits. When she protested that other women in the office wore them, they allegedly said those women could “wear what they like, as their general unattractiveness rendered moot their sartorial choices, unlike [Lorenzana] whose shapeliness could not be heightened by beautifully tailored clothing.”

From April 2009 she made a series of complaints of sexism. In July she was transferred to a different branch which she claims was a retaliatory action, and a month later she was dismissed. Citibank had given her a number of formal warnings based, it said, on her performance, including failure to meet a quota for the number of new business accounts. But in her lawsuit, Lorenzana accuses the bank of taking revenge for her complaints. The lawsuit will be decided by an arbitrator.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service