Wardrobe revisited
Dressing for work in a postpandemic world
Earlier this year, Richard Durham removed all the striped shirts in his closet. “It was a purge,” says the 27-year-old medical editor, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m in video calls every day and I realized I looked like a test pattern. My eyes hurt when I’d see myself on screen.”
To replace his collection of “mostly blue, mostly thinly striped” shirts, Durham went on an online buying binge, although he says it wasn’t much to get excited about. “I bought nine shirts— all solid colors,” he says. “They’re boring but they look much, much better online.”
Navigating a wardrobe today is much different than it was as recently as last year. Is it worth spending money on clothes that are rarely seen when employees work from home? And if they do buy new clothes, should they only concern themselves with what’s happening from the waist up?
“All the rules have changed,” says Sarah Smith, a former buyer for Macy’s. “We aren’t really sure about what we should wear and that’s spilling over into what we buy.”
But Smith says that doesn’t mean people don’t care how they look. Instead, she thinks today’s employees— whether they’re working from home or not— view their wardrobe as one entity. “They don’t break it up into work clothes, casual clothes, goingout clothes,” she says. “Today, it’s all the same. And whether they’re working from their kitchen or from the office, whether they’re dressed up or dressed down, they want to look good.” Emerging options
Lee Caraher, president and CEO of Double Forte, a creative communications agency with offices in New York, San Francisco and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, says two types of workers are emerging from the stay-at-home scene. The first, she says, is never going back to work attire for a combination of reasons. “For starters, they don’t have to. The work world has seen that work from home and work-casual actually works. It’s the quality of the work that matters — space and style are superfluous,” says Caraher. “Plus, they want to save money— they’ve faced job losses and reduced retirement accounts; they
won’t be buying ties or pumps.”
Caraher thinks today’s workers will build “capsule wardrobes,” a collection of quality pieces of clothing that can serve multiple scenarios and functions.
Suit up
But not everyone’s going casual, according to Caraher. She thinks a second group of workers— when they return to the office— will come back more formal than before. “They endured the hoodies and baseball caps during stay-at-home but they want that experience behind them,” she says. “They will be back in the office and they will be dressed to the nines.”
Micky Onvural, CEO of Bonobos, a menswear clothing brand based in New York, agrees that the lines between workwear and casualwear, which were once clearly defined, have become blurred, especially now that so many are working remotely and may continue to do so for the long-term. “Remote or not, work is no longer nine-to-five and so it crosses over into every aspect of our personal lives and vice versa,” Onvural says. “Casual workwear has emerged as a trend in and of itself, allowing for personalization and self-expression.” Onvural sees an increased desire for comfort-fitting clothes: • Suits will be more flexible in terms of styling
• Treating jackets and pants as separates that can be worn together in more formal situations and worn separately in more casual situations.
• With many people working from home— life slowing down in some regards — the quality over quantity trend is also accelerating. People are realizing they want fewer, higherquality suits that are durable and will last and can be rotated and more versatile for at-home wearing.
• Even in a remote, socially-distanced life, there’s still a role for suits, whether it’s a virtual interview or virtual date, and as we begin to navigate re-openings across the country, suits will come back, albeit in a more comfortable, flexible format.
Constance Hubbell, founder of The Hubbell Group, a Bostonbased strategic communications and reputation management firm, agrees that more formal business attire isn’t dead quite yet.
“When people are dressed professionally, they look and feel more successful. That won’t change entirely but we likely will see a step up from casual dress during the lockdown to smart business casual as things reopen,” she says
Hubbell points out that when people began working from home, they left a significant portion of their wardrobe untouched. “During the shutdown, dry cleaners were closed in many places and, as a result, people got used to getting by without the cleaners,” Hubbell says. “This is another reason why we may see more people dressing with a higher level of casual instead of full executive attire.”
Checking in
Hubbell says she sees more employers surveying their employees about their thoughts on a dress code that will work best as offices reopen. “That’s a smart strategy: Ask about employees’ concerns and fears. If you don’t know, you won’t be able to address those anxieties,” she says. “The initial survey might yield other insights into how your employees’ hiatus has changed their mindset about everything from social distancing to dress.”
Durham says some of his on-site projects required business casual in the past but when he has shown up to three different offices this year, he noticed a change in how his employer’s full-time workers dressed. “As a contractor, I try to emulate what the people who work there wear— everyone does, if they’re smart. I don’t want to stick out,” he says. “But when I had to go into the office, I was overdressed. Everyone was in jeans, not khakis like before.”
Durham says he emailed his project manager to make sure he wasn’t misinterpreting the new dress code. “And he sent me survey results from their team,” he says. “They asked and people answered. And the consensus was “professional but comfortable.” Maybe that’s a new term, I don’t know, but I like it.”
Regardless, Durham says he’s confident his new attire — his collection of solid, button-down shirts — will work if he has to return to the office, no matter the dress code. “Business attire? Tucked into my khakis. Casual? Untucked over my jeans,” he says. “I’m set either way.”