Dress-down Monday: what to wear when you're WFH

So, to bring you up to speed, we were first told by Boris to work from home “if we can”. Then it was “go back to work, if you can”. Now it’s back to the kitchen table/spare room/sofa once more, “if we can”. Blink, and you may have missed the middle instruction. I didn't, but then, the company I work for has very sensibly adopted a WFH strategy from the outset of the pandemic, and that's fine by me. In fact, throughout this coronavirus-riven last six months I have only worked from home. I've only set foot in my nominal place of work once, and that was for the interview that landed me the job in the first place. Since then, my office has been, initially, the kitchen table, and then, when my bony arse and the dining table chairs decided they were incompatible for the better part of nine hours a day, the front room took over. The sofa and a £5 IKEA coffee table (you know the ones - all white, 55x55cm, made entirely from MDF) became my workspace. The thing is, it has all just worked. What has been weird is that in six months I haven't worn anything resembling formal clothing once. In fact, if memory serves (and that's now getting hazy), the last time I wore my bespoke three-piece suit - bought for a wedding last year - was that job interview, save one family quiz night when I thought, "for a laugh", wearing it would make me - as co-host - look like a game show presenter. It didn't. 

Over the course of these six months I have also lost almost 20 kilos in weight, rendering most of my pre-lockdown work attire ridiculous. Shirts done up would make me look like an ex-con released after serving a very long sentence, and worn tieless, are now so capacious that to leave even one button undone exposes so much chest wig I'd resemble a yacht-dwelling Mediterranean arms dealer. Suits are now so oversized, shapeless and beyond salvage that I wouldn't even pass muster in a Talking Heads tribute act. All this is just as well as I haven't, really, been required to look like anything over the last half-year. On my daily round of Skype meetings, my colleagues have presented a variety of WFH dress styles, from those who - and fair play to them - wear a formal work shirt every day as it helps them get into part, to a multitude of T-shirts (including one today bearing the name of Metallica). All is fine. None of it leaves anyone thought less professional; the work gets done, we move on.

Now, I appreciate that all these descriptions are of the waist up, but if people are wearing their joggers or, in my case during the warmest months of the year, shorts, no-one cares, or should do. So let’s bring in here Ayesha Vardag, Britain’s self-styled “top divorce lawyer” and "the Diva of Divorce", according to TIME magazine, who has issued instructions to staff at her eponymous law firm on what to wear, presumably while physically in the office. In fact, Vardag - in a leaked e-mail reported in The Times and other newspapers - has driven down into some considerable specifics: “I don’t mind cravats, formal waistcoats,” she said, giving a nod to a form of modernity not seen since Bertie Wooster was living in fear of his Aunt Agatha. However, V-neck sweaters and “woolly vests” (i.e. the tank tops and sleeveless cardigans I am also prone to wearing when the weather turns cooler) are also out. I will admit to have worn a black V-neck under my suit for a number of years, ever since Gianluca Vialli brought Italian fashion to Chelsea in the mid-90s, though my appropriation of the style was more out of hiding my gut than trying to look like Luca… Anyway, “Super-tight trousers” are also on Vardag's verboten list, as are shoes with too pointy a toe. 

Pronouncing that lawyers should “look like a pro, not a pretty young thing”, Vardag also turned her attention to female members of staff, noting that women “can still of course be discreetly sexy and colourful and flamboyant at the same time according to your preference”. Women at the firm should “never be tacky or tarty and at the same time never be drab. It’s a delicate balance which most of you know instinctively. The naked look, with lots of flesh, is not OK.” To this Vardag added that she favoured “a Chanel/Dior/Armani look”, including “elegant” shoes, “not flip flops.” Well, duh. Woe betide anyone, either, who failed to maintain their hair, instructing that it “should always be squeaky clean and should at least appear natural”. “Brush your hair!!!,” the memo continued. “Check the mirror before you come out in the morning! Do not look as if you were dragged through a hedge backwards! Consider putting it up if it’s very long.” And for anyone who might be struggling in the Barnet department, Vardag offered her own help: “A chignon [no, me neither…] packs a lot of power punch. I can show you how to tie a scarf and set a chignon if you like. I’m that old.”

“It’s a Savile Row look we’re espousing,” Vardag's missive outlines. “Generally, double cuffs and cufflinks can transform the quality you project. Go for fewer items in your wardrobe, of quality.” In defence, Emma Gill, one of Vardags’ partners at the firm, told The Times that “as a top law firm, our clients demand high standards of professionalism and this is reflected in our dress code policy. While this is embraced by staff, the occasional reminder is in order to make sure we maintain our high standards.” Well, OK. While we’ve all be frothing about the long-term impact of the coronavirus on working practices - and whether we’ll ever return to the nine-to-five, Monday to Friday - little attention has actually been paid to the somewhat ludicrous proposition that mixed-pattern working could mean suits for some, three days a week, jogging bottoms and T-shirts on two days a week. Or not at all. In fact, no one really knows what will happen long term. The government and it’s Olympic-strength flip-flopping on everything might not help, either. 

Years ago, when I worked in the Netherlands, my then-company instigated a ‘dress-down Friday’ at its Amsterdam headquarters in the hope of instigating a more casual atmosphere for the final day of the working week. This, for some of my male Dutch colleagues of a certain age and background, meant wearing trousers in a variety of alarming hues (in fact, of a vibrancy even Michael Portillo in his railway journey documentaries, in which he wears ever-more shocking pastels, would reject for being ‘too much’). For others, it meant adopting the less adventurous American week-round office style, namely chinos and the ubiquitous button-down shirt. At my last company - a Silicon Valley-headquartered software business - de rigeur officewear consisted exclusively of jeans (the expensive-looking indigo kind, not the oil-stained, ragged-at-the-knee variety) for men matched with a double-cuff smart shirt and a blazer of some sort. Those wearing it thought they were edgy software sales types, but when everyone is dressed the same, it's no less a uniform than bankers all in pinstripes. 

This did serve to remind me of the French word for a suit: “costume”. Because that, in essence, is what all of these practices are. Whether you’re wearing a two-piece suit, blazer and jeans, or a tweed jacket with mustard-yellow jumbo cords, it is still nothing more than conformity. For that matter, we could all turn up dressed as Scott Tracy from Thunderbirds and it would matter very little. The fact remains that I actually look forward to the day when I can put on a smart suit and shirt, and lace up one of the pairs of formal shoes I’ve got gathering dust in a wardrobe. And I’m not in any way someone who likes to conform like that. I guess, though, it does come down to your personal style, but also the type of work you do. But it also depends on what your employer actually expects. Only 55% of workplaces have a dress code, according to the website Salary.com, and very few companies outline their expectations when onboarding new employees.

For many workers, it's trial and occasionally error. Many's the newbie who turns up on Day 1 wearing collar and tie or an expensive designer suit, only to discover they stand out amongst an office crowded by more casual business attire. When I worked in Silicon Valley I was told that wearing anything other than the local camouflage would stand me out as a 'suit'. So, jeans and whatever it was for two years. "If you work in law, regularly meet with executives, or otherwise hold a high-level position, you might be asked to come dressed 'business formal' or in 'boardroom attire'," advises lifestyle guru Jacqueline Curtis in a post on moneycrashers.com. "This is the highest level of professional dress". She recommends tailored suits in dark, neutral colours for men, a white shirt with a high-quality tie in "muted" neutral colours. "No novelty ties," she points out, instantly flagging the obscenities worn by The Fast Show's resident office "laugh", Colin Hunt. "Shoes should be closed-toe oxfords in brown or black, not loafers," she adds. So, what about my preferred brown suede numbers? Women are advised to follow a similar conservatism - skirt or trouser suits in neutral colours, closed-toe heels in similar non-startling hues.

Reading Curtis's advice, however, I recognise how few professions require such office attire these days. Even bank dealing rooms. The norm seems to be "business professional" which seems to sit somewhere between conservative and casual, and is more broadly open to interpretation. And then, if you're lucky, you'll work in an environment where it - mostly - really doesn't matter how you dress, as long as you don't cause offence or look like you've turned up in your decorating outfit. The bottom line, says Curtis, is to "err on the side of caution", especially when new in an organisation. Keep it “clean, tailored, and professional” is her advice. I suppose, then, the best guide is to simply understand your stakeholders, those you work with, those you work for and those you would, in normal times, encounter from outside your organisation. 

However, these aren't normal times. Your guess is as good as mine as to when they will be normal once again, by which time I'll have lost even more weight, and frankly will look ridiculous in anything I might have worn even six months ago. Which means taking out another mortgage on a new wardrobe that does fit, but let's cross that bridge when we come to it, eh? For now, I'll continue to dress appropriately, safe in the knowledge that the only people who can see what I wear below the waist Monday to Friday are my family, occasionally fellow customers at Waitrose during a lunchtime run, and the postman. Oh, and the cat, but her opinion really doesn't count.