Shorts in the office, at the reception or on the red carpet? For a long time, the answer to this recurring summer question was unequivocally "No!".
But now - after more than two years of everyday life with Corona and with a new awareness of heat waves and climate change - a lot seems to be different in midsummer 2022. Even style experts find different answers than before. Is the age of "fashion sins" over? Will every clothes be given away now?
The business costume loses importance
Just three years ago, the tips seemed clear when it came to fashion rules for the summer, for example in the office or on official occasions. The usual answers from style experts were: skirts, dresses, pants not too short, at most a hand's breadth above the knee. No transparent clothing, underwear must never shine through. The décolleté should never be lower than the armpit. Tops with spaghetti straps don't work at all. Open-toed shoes are taboo - and if you still want to wear them, you have to have well-groomed feet. Flip-flops have no place in the office, it's not the beach.
But the change seems to be there. The "Zeit Magazin" recently wrote: "Buttoned jackets in a glass case cooled down with fossil raw materials in a sealed city" - for decades that was the ideal of the business world and climate-damaging dress code. The ultimate: being able to wear a shirt and jacket at any time of the year. But in times of climate change, "the strengthened business suit, often understood as a symbolic armour, loses its protective function".
"Zeit" author Alexander Krex demanded in the comment: "Jackets off, socks off, straw hats, in the agency, in the law firm, in the bank, in the Bundestag. The new hot period needs a new dress code." The new office world should be "like an extensive fun pool": "Bermuda shorts, spaghetti straps, flip-flopping".
The "new casualness" is here
The German Fashion Institute (DMI) doesn't see it that easily, but chief analyst Carl Tillessen has noticed a small cultural revolution. "Because of lockdown or working from home, many people have now worn the most comfortable clothing available for two years. They no longer want to do without this comfort," says the expert and author ("Consumption - Why we buy what we don't need") the German Press Agency. "History teaches us that people never give up a comfort once they have conquered it. A hundred years ago, for example, once women had freed themselves from the corset, there was no going back."
According to DMI analyst Tillessen, the new relationship to fashion is not only reflected in "the fact that certain items of clothing that are perceived as uncomfortable, such as high heels and ties, are worn significantly less in everyday working life, but also in the fact that certain items of clothing that were previously taboo in everyday working life , have now become socially acceptable or rather suitable for the office". He thinks about slippers (slides), shorts, spaghetti straps and jogging pants.
"However, this new nonchalance should not be confused with carelessness," emphasizes Tillessen. "That means the sweatpants you go to work in aren't the same sweatpants you watched all seasons of Breaking Bad in. It's more about dressing as comfortably as possible without raising suspicion of having lost control of his life."
This works best with clothing that works on the principle of the polo shirt, which also combines the elegance of a shirt with the comfort of a T-shirt. Accordingly, the so-called Sweacket continued its triumphal march. What is meant is the sweatshirt-jacket mix, i.e. a combination of blazer and cardigan.
"The fact that after two years of messing about people feel the need to dress up again is only supposedly in contradiction to the new casualness," says Tillessen. "Whereas before the pandemic, for example, women would have gone to work and to the restaurant in the same suit and mid-heeled pumps afterwards, they now wear sneakers and sweatpants during the day and six-inch stiletto heels and a spectacular sequined dress at night." Since Corona there has been a much stronger polarization of clothing, hardly any middle. "Either radically comfortable or radically sexy. Either consistently everyday or consistently occasional. Either day or night."
And what about in winter? In view of the Russian war in Ukraine and the impending gas shortage, the "Zeit Magazin" said that a climate-friendly dress code should actually apply all year round. Say: "Less in summer, more in winter. Cardigan instead of jacket." This saves heating costs and CO2 emissions.
