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Post Covid fashion trends Contributed by Itextiles team As we emerge from our time of isolation, it’s clear as water that we have all been changed by the pandemic and our clothing is yet another reminder of that unintended and undeniable transformation. The feeling of having old clothes feel at once too restrictive and too drab, too cumbersome, too inconvenient, too not-me or the casual feeling of “I’m different now makes sense that my clothing should be too”. This feeling is not unique, anecdotally, most of the people affected by the pandemic have expressed a similar dilemma, peek at the internet and you’ll find countless strangers confused about how to dress for their return to in-person work, if you go out on the town you would feel the vibrancy is on parade. With bright colors, florals, prints, and big silhouettes, after such a bewildering rollercoaster, it seems like everyone wants to dress happy, take up space, and present themselves as their true selves. Traditional work wear transcending to causal. Throughout history, big global events like war, disease, depression, and revolution have directly impacted what we wear. “The periods of greatest shifts in fashion are in line with great shifts in society,” Dasher noted. Some of those moments are easy to pinpoint: the glitz of the Roaring '20s after emerging from World War I and the Spanish flu; pants for women after the factory fashions of
World War II. Now casual sneakers on top of chinos with a shirt are considered wearable attire in an office. Most of the people who spent time working from home wearing casual attire as they spent 8 hours changed the perspective of not just the employees but also the employer of the company since then many businesses have changed their dress code from traditional office wear to casual. Today, major players like Apple, Google, & Quicken Loans have casual dress codes. That's trickling into traditional companies too as JP Morgan, IBM, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and General Electric have recently relaxed their dress code restrictions, as Silicon Valley culture has gone mainstream and relaxed dress
codes are a way to attract millennial top talent. Now the main question comes: Do casual clothes lead to a casual attitude, and in turn, less productivity? If you’re always dressed in “play mode,” is it harder to be focused, alert and productive? Not. Adam Glinsky, a professor at the Columbia Business School found that clothing does, indeed, affect performance to a certain extent. Why? It’s what Glinksy calls “enclothed cognition” clothing influencing performance, if you feel confident in the attire you are wearing, you’re likely to try harder and perform better at a specific task.
Comfortable wear is the new norm The "Netflix & Chill" concept is making people care less about the fear of missing out and more about the joy of missing out. In a lockdown, people had rediscovered the joy of staying inside, this period has given rise to a new apparel category: i.e., loungewear which can be worn outdoors as well as indoors, becoming a better choice for the environment by producing minimum waste. The next normal saw all kinds of sartorial revolutions and disruptions from Hollywood celebrities attending award galas in their PJs, to people ditching high heels and women giving up wearing makeup. The relationship one had with one’s wardrobe transformed completely.
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PAKISTAN TEXTILE JOURNAL - May 2022
