There was a time when September arrived with the anticipation of Christmas morning—not because summer was ending, but because the September issue of Vogue had landed.
It was the fashion event of the year: impossibly thick, impossibly glamorous, and heavy enough to double as a doorstop. Fashion devotees waited breathlessly for the new collections, the colors, the shoes, the coats, the bags. What would we wear? What would be in? What would we absolutely have to have?
Fashion mattered.
And then, apparently, we all got tired and went to bed.
Somewhere between athleisure and DoorDash, getting dressed became optional. Pants became oppressive. Shoes became negotiable. Pajamas became daywear.
Today, the fashion question is no longer “What are you wearing?”
It’s “Did you just get out of bed?”
Students are showing up to class in pajamas. College students wander around campus in sweats and slippers as though they are en route to the laundry room. Increasingly, young people are appearing at the office in gym clothes—leggings, sweatshirts, sneakers, baseball caps—looking less like they are heading into a meeting than preparing to deadlift their manager.
The pandemic may have normalized working from home. Unfortunately, it also seems to have convinced an entire generation that home is a state of mind.
And it isn’t just the young.
I recently witnessed a scene at breakfast at the Loews Regency on the Upper East Side of New York that nearly caused me to choke on my Americano. A mother had brought her two little girls to breakfast wearing pink pajamas.
Pink pajamas.
At the Loews Regency.
For those unfamiliar with the institution, this is not the neighborhood IHOP. The Regency has long been associated with New York’s legendary power breakfast, where deals are made, fortunes discussed and people presumably arrive wearing actual clothes.
Yet there they were: two adorable little girls dressed for bedtime, having breakfast in a room where corporate titans negotiate billion-dollar transactions.
When going shopping, put on your best….pajama pants!
I could almost hear a distant voice from Condé Nast headquarters:
“Anna has been informed.”
One imagines Anna Wintour receiving the report. The pink pajamas. Breakfast. The Regency.
A pause.
A raised eyebrow.
Perhaps the faintest tightening of the lips.
And then, with surgical precision:
“The pajamas are lovely. The timing is unfortunate.”
One suspects Anna Wintour would not object merely because the pajamas were pajamas. She would object because the occasion called for something else. Fashion, in the Wintour universe, has always been about understanding the moment. Clothes are a language. They announce that you know where you are, why you are there and how you intend to meet the world.
The Regency girls were not committing a fashion crime. They were committing an occasion crime.
And that may be what we have lost.
Do young people simply no longer like clothes? Have we collectively decided that getting dressed is an oppressive social construct? Is putting on pants before leaving the house now considered an unreasonable demand on one’s personal freedom?
Or is something deeper going on?
Certainly, there has always been an element of rebellion in fashion. Grunge was deliberately disheveled. Punk was designed to shock. Hippies rejected conventional dress altogether. But those movements were still fashion. They were statements. They had a point of view.
There is a difference between dressing badly and dressing in a style that happens to look bad.
Grunge said, I reject your rules.
Pajamas at breakfast say, I couldn’t be bothered.
And therein lies the problem.
Imelda Marcos with U.S. Presidents
Style, at its best, is a form of self-expression. It doesn’t require designer clothes, enormous wardrobes or a personal stylist. Some of the most recognizable personal styles are wonderfully simple. Steve Jobs had his black turtleneck. Palmer Luckey has his Hawaiian shirts. Audrey Hepburn had her cropped pants, ballet flats and timeless, gamine elegance. Neither Jobs, Luckey nor Hepburn needed to reinvent their wardrobes every morning. They created a signature.
That is style: knowing who you are and presenting it to the world with intention.
The problem with the pajama-and-sweatpants phenomenon isn’t that everyone needs to dress formally all the time. Imelda Marcos once came pretty close to making a ball gown appropriate courtroom attire.
When the former First Lady of the Philippines appeared in a Manhattan federal courtroom in 1988 to face racketeering charges, she arrived in a floor-length turquoise silk-and-chiffon terno, a traditional Filipina dress with dramatic butterfly sleeves, pearls and high heels.
Now, Imelda may have been many things, but under-dressed was not one of them.
She understood something our pajama generation seems to have forgotten: an occasion has a dress code, even when nobody writes it down.
Imelda simply took the concept a little too far.
And that is the point. We don’t need ball gowns at Starbucks. We don’t need suits for chemistry class. There is a time for jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt.
But there should also be a time when you make an effort.
Because getting dressed is about more than fashion. It is an act of respect—for yourself, for the occasion and for the people around you.
Clothing tells the world that you understand where you are.
You dress differently for the beach than for church. Differently for a job interview than for the gym. Differently for dinner than for sleeping.
This used to be considered basic civilization.
Now, apparently, it is controversial.
And perhaps this is why the decline of dressing well is more troubling than it first appears. We are not merely losing an interest in fashion. We may be losing the idea that some occasions deserve our best selves.
There is something wonderful about dressing for dinner, polishing your shoes, tying a proper tie, putting on a jacket, brushing your hair and walking out the door knowing you look your best.
It changes how you carry yourself.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed, “When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm.”
Exactly.
When you know you look your best, you can stop thinking about how you look and start thinking about everyone else.
Getting dressed well is not vanity. It is a small gesture of confidence, civility and respect. It says: This occasion matters. You matter. I made the effort.
The September issue may never be what it once was. But surely we can still aspire to something better than a world in which the Devil doesn’t wear Prada.
He wears jammies.
Rowena Itchon is the COO of Pacific Research Institute and dresses with impeccable style!