For some, the pandemic has helped them find their style
The phrase “crop top” was not in Laken Brooks’ vocabulary before March 2020. Months of working from home at the start of the pandemic, though, gave the 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate a chance to reevaluate her fashion choices.
So when the chance to own a cropped T-shirt presented itself, she took it. While for many people, style has been, at best, a secondary concern during the pandemic, some, like Brooks, found their personal style.
Before the pandemic, Brooks mostly wore business-casual wear to teach her students at the University of Florida in Gainesville. A couple of weeks into working from home, she decided to step out of her comfort zone and ordered a pair of leggings, having previously sworn them off. She realized that she didn’t feel confident in her clothes from prelockdown life. Brooks has health issues that create intense bloating but wore clothes that were uncomfortable for the sake of appearing professional.
“I was just kind of trying to ignore what I was wearing and focus on my work,” she said.
While the leggings were comfortable for teaching from her desk at home, they were also a significant step in her style journey. This seemingly small act “made me feel comfortable in my body for the first time,” Brooks said.
Style in solitude
With the structures of prepandemic life removed for Amelia Crook, a 43-year-old mother of two, she felt compelled to rediscover her style a little more than a year after the first significant lockdown.
With a professional background in technology and an affinity for the connecting powers of TikTok, Crook, who lives in Kyneton, Australia, posted her first video last May. It was a plea: “Hi, I’m Amelia, I’m 42 and I’ve misplaced my personal style. And I need you to help me find it.”
“Previously I bought clothes to fit in,” Crook said in a Zoom interview. “That was a big revelation for me. It was like, I have my work wardrobe, I have my mom wardrobe, and these are the acceptable things to wear.”
With the help of her 127,000 followers, Crook polished up her style into one that she describes as “structured with feminine whimsy.” In her videos, Crook tries on outfits composed of clothes from her closet and new purchases and receives feedback from her followers.
When Crook stepped out in her new outfits, it was with a better sense of which clothes make her feel good.
“I have a more refined view of how I want to show up in the world,” she said.
Dressing for the camera
Alicia Kennedy, 36, a food writer who lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico,
felt more visible than ever when the pandemic took hold. Instead of phone calls, people suddenly wanted to meet on Zoom. She was also new to
San Juan and wanted to create a visual identity for herself. She began investing in pieces by sustainable designers like Mara Hoffman and Puerto Rican brands like Luca and
Muns.
Kennedy’s style evolved from chunky boots and crop tops to oversize white button-down shirts and bicycle shorts as her work-from-home uniform. When she’s not wearing that, she’s likely to be found in a slip dress or billowy button-down.
“I’ve come to be more interested in really simple silhouettes and things that are really adaptable,” Kennedy said.
When the world felt chaotic, Kennedy found structure in her outfits even when working from home.
“Just the idea that I still needed to get up every day, still needed to work, even if everything was unpredictable and strange, meant that I needed more of an identity through what I wore,” she said. “Also, it’s an easy time to just become absolutely sloppy. So it was kind of a conscious choice just to not do that.”*