In the Western world – in theory at least – we are freer than we have ever been in terms of what we put on in the morning, whether we’re going to work or just for a walk. But whenever liberty is invoked as the ultimate goal, be it by libertarian politicians insisting on deregulation or fashion editors exhorting us to free the nipple, the concept needs interrogation. One man or woman’s freedom can, after all, mean another’s recoil at a bit too much aggressive “in your face” dressing, or indeed undressing.
When I was a child in sedate Kensington in the 1960s, where letting it all hang out was still something of a niche activity, there was an elderly gent who used to be seen trotting to the shops in his dressing gown and carpet slippers. This caused ripples up and down the Villas, and murmurings of whether an intervention might be called for. These days “pyjama dressing” is an actual look, as witness the profusion of companies offering silk-and-lawn cocktail versions, from Olivia von Halle to Sleeper, ornamented with leopards, stripes and feathers. But have we really changed?
Among the several rumblings set off by one of covid’s most contentious consequences, the shift in working practices to accommodate WFH or Working From Home, a regular complaint (and not just from Conservative politicians) was the resulting “decline in standards” of office dress. Freedom from formal office wear had been on the horizon, admittedly, since big tech and its “bros” began calling the shots and the face of big business no longer looked like the pinstriped officials of the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank. But like well-heeled drug-dealers in hoodies and baseball caps, after lockdown the ground had well and truly shifted.
Lycra that used to have to be stashed in your locker can now be worn to your desk along with super-cushioned trainers, and when the Financial Times can herald a black hoodie as the most indispensable and versatile of garments, surely the last nail has been applied to Savile Row’s coffin. And yet. And yet… Savile Row lives: that very same issue of the City’s pink paper named five new faces on the block in formal suiting.
“Freedom in dress” means something different to everyone
Because “freedom in dress” means something different to everyone. For some of us, for example, a uniform is the ultimate straitjacket, the deprivation of individuality and symbol of submission to a set of rules laid down by others. But for others – schoolchildren for example, some of whom will have the money to dress in designer clothes and others who decidedly will not – a uniform can offer escape from judgement and competition, a theoretically level playing field, even if there will always be rebels determined to roll their waistbands until their school kilt skims mid-thigh. Such uniforms need not be formal: the Italian matron at the seaside wears a uniform of linen shift and headscarf in bright colours, while her English counterpart sports Boden pedal pushers and espadrilles. When I was small our mother cut all our hair off every summer and issued us with football shorts and white t-shirts. The burden of deciding what to wear was lifted: we were freed from choice.
Freedom in dress can also suggest the sense of physical unfettering: the practicality or comfort or fun of wearing exactly what we like, rather than what someone else – or society, or gender stereotyping – demands of us. Walk down most high streets these days – certainly the high street of a university city such as mine – and freedom from convention will be in ample and happy evidence. There may be a woman with cropped hair in spray-on, low-cut black, with a scattering of tattooed stars across her breasts, a good-looking guy in a Laura Ashley dress, a “mature” Goth in studded boots, teenagers in a bright chaos of charity shop finds. There may be suits, there may be tight-strapped Vivienne Westwood that verges on bondage; there will be stiff tweeds and oversized puffa jackets in lurid orange. There could even be a sprinkling of “normcore” dressers (often, me) for whom “liberty” just means a nice warm jumper and a pair of plimsolls. Or – whisper it – a floral blouse.
But any high street will always include people who feel threatened by such signs of overt change, diversity and freedoms from which they themselves are, or perhaps have been, deprived. That is a response many of the “free” dressers will have to accommodate in their pursuit of personal choice. While some fellow shoppers might just blink once or twice to see a bearded human in a frock, there are other places where the onlooker might become abusive, even violent. Because the price of freedom is tolerance, especially in a wider world where that is in short supply. An acceptance, or embrace of the other, is as good for the soul here as in every other area of our liberated lives.
Christobel Kent is a Gold Dagger-nominated author. Her latest novel “In Deep Water” is out now
