Lockdown Fashion – How is it Affecting your Mindset

World-wide lockdown has seen to the emergence of a new trend we thought we would never see come back – sweatpants. According to the tracking firm Edited and The Guardian, sales of sweatpants are up by 36% compared to last year in 2019.

The work from home uniform has been seen to be sported by the likes of model, Bella Hadid, and Vogue Editor in Chief, Anna Wintour.

Will this new cult favourite have a place in our post-coronavirus workwear? Or is it actually hindering our productivity and working from home mindset?

It is hard to believe that the double tracksuit is a piece in your closet that is a true asset to helping you bring your A-game to work and will soon become a part of your confidence dressing rotation. The term confidence dressing refers to simply embracing yourself and your uniqueness whilst styling your daily outfit to your likes rather than emulating what is currently on trend.

Dressing and assembling an outfit each day clearly has an immense effect on how you feel and therefore what you put out into the world. It was found that if the brain links fashion garments such as a two-piece suit or a scarlet red dress to emotions of power, strength and intelligence, you are more likely to emboddy these attributes whenever you wear these clothing pieces.

A counter-argument from Forbes magazine was made stating that “if you wear a t-shirt and jeans at work and the same on the weekend” how do you differentiate your ‘work-life’ and ‘weekend-life’. It is argued that dressing casually can actually cause employees to feel less focused and unproductive, taking work-related tasks longer to complete.

What is clear though is that the clothing we wear has great symbolic meaning. We may feel fitter wearing active wear or more professional in work wear or more confident wearing your favourite outfit. What you need to decide is your power outfit, in order to emulate confidence, power and productivity in your everyday life.

So, if you think your power outfit, is the current double tracksuit trend or a great pair of heels don those items to assert confidence in all of your Zoom meetings, and who knows maybe those sweatpants will be the gateway to the best version of yourself.