The thinking shopper

Style resolutions for the nation

The time has come for all of us to hold up a hand and swear solemnly not to live in our leggings, says Emily Cronin

When future anthropologists sift through fashion coverage from 2020, they’ll be convinced that women turned up on work video calls wearing Zoom-friendly earrings, bright lipstick and statement tops. They’ll determine that we all dressed up for supermarket runs. And of course we wore high heels for Zoom cocktail parties with friends (‘So fun!’).

The truth is closer to this: if you were working from home and bothered to engage with waist-up dressing, below the waist you probably kept on the same leggings or pyjama bottoms you wore the day before. Nobody really bought a pair of earrings because they looked good onscreen. And after the first Zoom cocktail or two, the novelty wore off, and we returned to locktails with Netflix instead of friends.

To be honest, 2020 was not a banner year for fashion. For most of us, self-presentation was far from front of mind as we grappled with a constant stream of new jargon, statistics, restrictions and general doom.

But now we’re in a new year, with vaccinations having begun and plenty of pent-up hope for what could come next. So let’s own up to some of the bad style habits we’ve all succumbed to at some point over the past million months. And pledge to leave them behind with 2020.

STRAIGHT-LEG JEANS, £210, Totême (net-a-porter.com)

LEATHER AND WOOD CLOG MULES, £285, Isabel Marant (net-a-porter.com)

HIGH-WAISTED LEGGINGS, £85, Prism2 (prismlondon.com)