The new rules are: there are no rules. But is it really OK to wear lingerie to the office or a tracksuit to the shows? Jess Cartner-Morley rips up the dress code
Earlier this year, when the headteacher of a Darlington primary school wrote a letter warning parents that the wearing of pyjamas was not welcome at her school gate, it felt like the last gasp of a dying age. The dress code is dead, having been slowly starved of oxygen by the ubiquity of informality. We are instantly on first-name terms, and no one dresses for dinner. A whole new industry around athleisure has sprung up, selling clothes you can wear all day Saturday, from yoga to dinner.
Hurrah! Right? Actually, I am not so sure. The white tie and starched pinnies of Downton Abbey might have been a bind, but at least everyone knew where they stood. Dress codes have now been ditched for a kind of rampant individualism, in which dressing for any occasion – work, a party, lunch, the gym – is a contest with no rules, an every-man-for-himself brawl.
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