Today I am wearing a slightly V-necked, slightly cropped duck-egg blue knit jumper. It has cuffed balloon-sleeves that bell out from the underarm, and it is one part of a co-ord – the sister piece being a midi-skirt in the exact same knit texture and the exact same delicate blue hue – that I bought in an attempt to recreate a knitted pastel two-piece look from a street style photo at Autumn/Winter 2019’s Paris Fashion Week (which I wrote about here in one of my first ever blog posts). Instead, though, today I am wearing it with a pair of striped pyjama bottoms rendered in an aubergine-purple and white stripe. I’ve probably had them since I was about 12. I don’t own any joggers so these are my answer to the question of comfortable loungewear. They’re fairly fitted, hugging my lower half in a pleasant, almost satisfying fashion rather than a constrictive one.
For context, it’s Saturday, it rained all morning and I woke up at 7:30am. I had been particularly looking forward to a weekend lie-in. Not that I’ve been getting up early a lot, in fact most days I’ve been sleeping in later than I ever have – I’ve always been an early riser by comparison to most 20 year-olds I know. I’m not sure if it’s my body’s attempt to recover from the six months sleeping in a bed in an apartment on a street that meets a busy junction in the 8th arrondissement of Paris when even if I felt like I was sleeping well, I subconsciously knew I wasn’t, or rather it telling me that it knows I have very little to do with my days and so there simply is no need to get up. Anyway, I woke up at 7:30am to the worst period pains I’ve had in years. In other words, there was no going back to sleep. My mum brought me a cup of tea and toast in bed that I nibbled on in an attempt to alleviate the nausea and I treated myself to a morning bath. I didn’t think about what I was going to put on today, skipping my daily ritual of staring into the depths of my wardrobe having a mental conversation with myself about how limited I feel by it until I finally decide what to wear, I just slipped into two of the comfiest garments that I own.
It would be easy for this to become my daily uniform, since I spend most of my time perched on my bed or at most sat at the kitchen table hunched over my laptop, hidden from any third-eye gaze that might wish to pass judgement on my sartorial state or appearance. Admittedly, some days when I get back from my daily walk – if I can muster up the motivation to get that far – I replace whatever is clothing me from the waist down with my fail-safe pyjama bottoms. But wearing pyjamas all day forms a part of what I consider to be a treat, reserved for weekends and self-care days like today perhaps is, that of doing nothing – or at least, very little. After however many weeks of lockdown, the luxury that is indulging in 8-hour sofa shifts and afternoon upon afternoon of bottomless Netflix in pyjamas becomes an everyday reality and once the novelty of this eventually wears off, spending the foreseeable future in a perpetual state of sartorial laziness starts to feel like a fatiguing prospect.
So on days that are not like this, on days that I have work to do or things to write or cakes to bake, I get dressed. I put on jumper dresses and tights or tailored trousers and cardigans layered over T-shirts. My recipe for quarantine dressing without a doubt includes a generous dose of comfort optimisation, nothing too tight or restrictive, certainly nothing that requires me to wear an underwired bra, but still offers an aesthetic release that is quietly nurturing in a period overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.
The irony that accompanies something that’s arguably as frivolous as getting dressed (up) in such distressing and sombre times is not lost on me. But delighting in fashion can offer an antidote to isolation-induced sadness, one that comes in the form of combinations of textures and and patterns and medleys of colours and allows us to face this nightmare while still feeling like ourselves.
Word has it that putting on an outfit that makes you feel good is scientifically proven to lift your mood, and even make you more productive. I suppose it’s not that surprising really. When I feel good in an outfit, when I keep the muscles moving in the creatively-inclined part of my brain by putting together a WFH ensemble that is perfectly balanced between dressed-up and coziness, it translates into everything I do that day. Getting dressed helps create structure, a firmly divided line between day and night, a ritual offering solace in that it is an element of normalcy we can look to during times that feel so abnormal.
If the art of getting dressed is a vehicle of expression when we present ourselves to the outside world, then what is the purpose of clothes – and I mean real clothes – when we’re no longer putting together day-to-day outfits with an audience in mind? The concept of ‘dressing for yourself’ takes on a whole new meaning when you are, quite literally, dressing only for yourself. It can be freeing to put on clothes whose sole purpose in practice is to serve no-one but yourself – a process conductive to the discovery of what combinations of clothes truly make us feel ourselves. Outside of the contextual confines of dressing for whatever work/day-to-day life situation you’d usually find yourself in, with endless dressing possibilities not restricted by external factors, fashion has the power to offer a form of escape, a creative outlet to counter the mundanity of everyday life.
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