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People are not dressing well anymore.
I’ll include myself in that assessment. When I first started teaching, I wore a coat and tie every day, although I’d shed the coat pretty quickly. On Fridays, when teachers were allowed to wear jeans, I’d make myself wear a tie if I wore jeans, as a compromise (that also used to be my stage look—jeans, sports coat, tie).
Since The Age of The Virus, everything has loosened up. I happily wear polo shirts—tucked in!—to work most everyday, aside from the six weeks of frosty winter we sometimes get in South Carolina. Fiddling around in an un-air-conditioned football pressbox in August is far more pleasant when I’m not wearing a long-sleeve button-up with a goofy tie.
Indeed, teachers can now wear jeans, so long as they are of a darker hue, any day of the week. My female colleagues avail themselves of this privilege fairly shamelessly. As I descend elegantly into middle age, I’ve adopted the uniform of my people: five-pocket workman’s slacks with a tucked-in polo or short-sleeve button-up shirt.
What has stirred my sartorial ire is not form-fitting jeans or polo shirts, but the prevalence of pajamas—yes, outright pajamas—among the general population.
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The Portly Politico 
What is dressing well? What might seem appropriate or professional to some might seem too uniform, common or ugly to others.
I say wear what you want, in the right settings. If I’d have continued teaching, I wouldn’t have dressed in a suit, as I did for teaching practice but in a decent shirt, casual jacket, jeans and shoes. After all, what you say and how you act is more important than how you look.
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Covid did the opposite for me. I got so sick of working from home in sweats and wife beaters that I now push formality whenever I leave the house. Not over doing it, just dressing like an important adult man.
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Excellent, DP—and my apologies for not responding sooner! Yes, it’s nice to lounge in comfort now and then, but there’s too much of a “good” thing. It feels good to dress well.
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I aim for the middle. I don’t dress like one of those peacocks with the vest, bow tie, and pocket square, viz. Tom Wolfe. I also don’t wear shorts, flip flops, and a T-shirt with a barbecue stain on it that has become the “uniform” of today’s laid-back culture. I wear work clothes.
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Yes—the perfect medium.
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