What Is Style If Nobody Sees It?
I’ve spoken parts of this story to different people, on different occasions, for different reasons — but today, I’m writing it down because finally, the reason I’m telling the story feels like it makes sense. The one about how, when I had just graduated from fashion school at 21, all I wanted was freedom and independence.
At my first “real” job (though I’d later refer to the job I hold now as my first “real” job, because it was my first job with *insert sparkle emoji* benefits) I made a total of $18,000 a year, living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I lived at home with my parents for several years. And, at a time when I watched the world or work start to crumble and job security become a forlorn concept, I was one of many Millennials with creative dreams who discarded traditional paths and decided that making it on my own and making enough so that I could be free and travel; that this was all I wanted.
That’s changed. It’s no longer all I want now, but it was the beginning of how, many years ago, I started, by accident, a new life working from home. It wasn’t a sudden transition. I started freelancing as soon as I graduated, because I needed to make more money and I couldn’t figure out how that would ever happen without a side hustle. I discarded opportunities to grow and learn because I thought I was on the clock to increase my earning power in my early twenties. I was trying to lean in. But all that was happening was that I was burning out. Four blogs, four businesses, and 2.5 jobs later, when my life as I knew it started to really fall apart (shedding the snake skin, you could say), I landed that first “real” job with benefits and all, and this time, I’d be working from home full-time.
I’ll admit that working from home was a big perk for me at the time, but it wasn’t something that I took all that seriously. It was just there. I didn’t have a car and didn’t want to get one in order to pull my life together. I didn’t have the money to. And I had another job. This new gig fit into my life, without me having to change too much of it. It was like a man on the side, one who I hadn’t planned on falling in love with, but who made it easy for me to. But, I planned to slowly transition out of that job because I needed more than flexibility; I wanted, near the tail end of my twenties, to make an impact. To build things. To do more. Suddenly, with this new freedom, the appeal of working from anywhere in the world, so real and so tangible now, became less my goal and more an afterthought.
Just as my financial and career life was starting to make some grain of sense, the life I lived once my laptop shut down for the day (who am I kidding though: it’s always open) was senseless. I had come to think of working from home as a refuge from all the things I now no longer had to deal with that “other” people had to: small talk, commuting, getting a UTI and the embarrassment of having to excuse myself to go to the washroom every hour.
The typical routines of our lives, so bound to work — socializing, getting to work, figuring out what to pack for lunch and who to eat it with — all the things that come out of necessity because we, for so many years, have “gone to work” instead of, as my younger sister pointed out in sharp contrast to what I do: “roll into work”.
Remote work is on the rise, and it’s not going away. Some even predict that nearly three quarters of the American workforce will be mobile by 2020.
Just as remote work has morphed from being a refuge and alternative, it has in a momentary flash in the grand scheme of things, become the future of work. Theirs and mine. It wasn’t some sort of transitory period between gigs, it wasn’t a less serious jab at a career because I didn’t have to go to an office; it was my job. It was my work. And it was, and is, my life.
But, here’s the thing: I hated my clothes.
I didn’t realize it as it was happening, but I stopped getting dressed altogether, days blurred together just like my outfits did. I had a closet of clothes that no longer worked (pun intended) because they contained all the remnants of a wardrobe made for looking “put together”-ish. Ish because who I am kidding: I’ve never actually worked in an actual corporate office, don’t even know what a cubicle feels like, have never owned a suit, and my last office was in the back studio in Gastown, Vancouver, where my bosses played indie rock and we hobnobbed with Dave Grohl, Olivia Wilde and Blue Ivy’s stylist. But I digress. I was spending now 90%+ of my time at home, I didn’t have to get dressed to see people or go outside, so what purpose does fashion serve me? Is it a moot thing of my past, only to be drawn out on occasion for the purposes of dating, going out, and making impressions? Does that make me a hypocrite for whom style represents only a mirage to which I’d like to appear to others, and not a thing I do for myself?
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If I wear a cool outfit and no one is there to see it, what’s even the end of that question? (Do I have style? Is style important? What is style, even?)
The core of that question lies in the exploration of this thought: Can something exist without being perceived? Or, what is the difference between what something is, and how it appears? These are questions philosophers and physicists have been asking for centuries; I think it applies very much so to the world of fashion and style, particularly as we enter a time when we are more separate and alone, and yet together and connected than ever. Perception exists all sorts of ways, not just in the face to face and in zone of IRL.
But then, came the greatest revelation of my sartorial life, and the privilege I think so many of us who happened upon the world of working remotely take for granted: I actually can wear anything I want now, absolutely anything. I don’t have a job to dress for, I don’t have people I need to impress, no code of societal norms to adhere to.
The first thing I did when I quit my other job and left a bad marriage was dye my hair orange. That was easy. A box five boxes of bleach and dye later, I was there.
Changing my wardrobe? Not so much. I wasn’t aware of just how much work dictated life, which dictated our closets. And as I looked in mine, I saw jeans I no longer wanted to touch because the thought of sitting at my desk in them made me wince. I saw black pants that I bought because I needed black pants, but I didn’t want to spend any money on them because I didn’t actually want black pants — and so I kept a pair of the most uncomfortable pair in my pant drawer just in case I’d ever need them for work. Like the guy you stick with just in case, even though you know the best thing to do is really to Marie Kondo him out of your life.
It became too easy to reach for those grey sweatpants, whatever tshirt I had, and my hoodie from work to stay cozy because I also stopped moving while working from home. I didn’t like the person I saw in the mirror, and if this was my life from here on forth, I needed to get changed. Literally.
On my quest to rediscovering style without rules, I’ve come up with my own: 1) Comfort 2) Colour and 3) Flexibility. The best thing is, I can break my own rules whenever I want. Just as I discovered life is about creating our own rules, I’ve started to recognize the privilege it is to be able to wear what I actually want. And that’s made fashion so much more fun. Because I don’t have to invest in work clothes, I spend more on the things that I truly love/need/want: like apartment pants, yes with the elastic waistbands. The glutton in me approves, so that’s another win. And though my wardrobe’s a work in progress, just as I am, I’m excited finally to realize that I have the freedom I was looking for all along, it just took me a while to catch up. We so often don’t realize how free we are in the moments we’re living right now, always looking forward to next or something else, that we don’t see what is right in front of us and truly making it work. Maybe you’re here because you’re on the same journey as I am, looking to recalibrate your style in the new world of work where your only office is at home, at a coffee shop, or wherever else your laptop takes you. Or, maybe you just have a thing for comfort and style — that’s totally cool too.
Most people’s idea of loungewear is too grey, one point past comfy into frumpy, and not made for the idea that some of us may very well be lounging around at home for the rest of our foreseeable lives, not escaping from it. So cheers to living and working full force and in style, because hey, even if nobody but the UPS guy sees you, you can at least post your cool outfit on Instagram.