Of all the new found habits developed in lockdown, slopping around in joggers and sweatshirts has arguably been the easiest to get used to… and potentially the hardest to break.
Waistbands… euchh! How did we put up with them for so long!?
It’s a sentiment that’s being echoed far and wide, but dressing down by default does have its down sides, as the rise of the ‘loungewear lull’ is going to prove.
With the novelty of not needing to make an effort officially beginning to wane, dressing down is by now starting to drag our mood and productivity in the same direction. DOWN!
The difficulty comes, in part, from the fact that stress (an inevitable consequence of lockdown) can cause our general outlook to become narrower, so it really is no wonder that we’re only typically wearing 10% of our (most comfortable) wardrobe at the moment. .
Dressing up, by all accounts, can seem like a lot of effort for no reason, but it is something that is likely to pay dividends in terms of our wellbeing.
Clothes, after all, are about so much more than comfort - something it’s easy to forget when the currency of ‘cosy’ is at a premium.
Breaking the cycle of dressing down, luckily, doesn’t necessarily mean we need to follow workplace dress codes at home.
In fact, this can have the opposite effect as our subconscious thoughts are then diverted to how uncomfortable our waistband is, which in turn reduces cognitive productivity.
In these home-working times, a happy medium is the best we can expect, with the trend for ‘waist up’ dressing posing the best kind of compromise.
Teaming a smart top with joggers goes some way to help create a more ‘pulled together’ mindset, without taking away from the comfort that is a small (but important) consolation during these otherwise uncomfortable times. (Note: In the absence of joggers...a sneaky hair tie does the trick!)
It’s not a given that it will make a difference for everyone, but if nothing else, ‘waist up’ dressing up is a step towards the return of the normalcy that we’ve missed…and the waistbands we haven’t!