Why dressing up is important even if you are not going anywhere
- 28 Apr 2020
Is loungewear the answer to all our woes nowadays? Do we have to dress up even though we have nowhere to go? Is it really wise to wear your new clothes when all you have to do is sit on the sofa?
Well, research has shown that the clothes you wear can have an impact on you mind, hence reiterating the phrase, “dress for the job you want, not for the one you have.”
Karl Lagerfeld once famously said that “sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.”
The problem is, you can’t wear that Cath Kidston penguin set your mum bought you in sixth form unless you’re happy for your boss, teammates and HR department to lose the final scintilla of respect they had for you the second you zoom call them. Video conferencing is here to scupper your apathetic aesthetic.
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That’s not to say we should be going all out in our nine to five, pretend-to-be-a-professional office ensembles during lockdown. No, that would be a real waste of ironing time that could be better used to do sun salutations/read a chapter of your book/teach yourself Mandarin/sleep an extra 15 minutes/[insert personal quarantine goal here] before work. If there’s one thing we all deserve during a lockdown, its comfort — and that simply doesn’t come from a starched white shirt and pencil skirt.
There is a sartorial middle ground. Quarantine chic is all about striking that delicate balance between versatile, crease-free fabrics and ensembles that replace your usual “day-to-night” look with a “desk-to-couch-to-jog-around-the-park-for-five-minutes-before-giving-up” look.
It’s about taking advantage of not being constricted by a high-waisted trouser and shoes that pinch, while also being able to hop on a FaceTime call to your boss and still look like you’ve got your life together. It’s an outfit that enables you to quickly dodge oncoming strangers to ensure you can maintain your two metres of social distance at all times.
Making an effort while working remotely is more than just about fashion, of course. Who cares what you look like when the only person seeing you is the delivery man through your peephole or your pet goldfish? Well, psychologists have long investigated the way our outfits impact our behaviour.
The “dress for success” mentality has been explored in numerous studies. One, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science in 2015, found that participants performed better in cognitive tests when wearing smart clothes than those in casual garb.
Ergo, it’s important to get fully dressed for work whether your office is the kitchen table or the metal bistro set you yanked off your balcony at the beginning of this new era of remote working. The act of getting dressed also prepares our mind and body for a day of work and separates the home space from the work, so you don’t end up getting too comfortable with the latter.
Clothes can have a direct impact on our mental wellbeing, too. So-called enclothed cognition is a theory that suggests the way we dress has a direct impact on our mood. If we wear something we perceive to be uplifting, it can lift our spirits with it.
So if your work usually requires you to wear a suit and tie or a uniform, now’s your time to shine. Ditch your TM Lewin shirt and swap it for a Hawaiian; dye your hair pink; swaddle yourself in cashmere; don that band T-shirt from that festival you once went to back when festivals were things that people went to. The power of clothes to lift the spirits is greatly underappreciated — and God knows we need a little uplift right now.