Lockdown is over, so stop dressing like slobs

Now that we’re open up, let us communicate about garments.

For 12 weeks, since the coronavirus lockdown started, New Yorkers have been slumming it in their pajamas and sweaty fitness center attire. They’re “working from home” — but dressing like slobs. From CEOs and Broadway stars to Wall Streeters and sales clerks, everyone has been united by elastic waistbands and a lack of deodorant.

Time for a Zoom conference! You open up your laptop computer and are stunned to discover that your manager, who earns in the superior six figures, has turned into Grizzly Adams with a grease-stained Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Your previously Kind-A co-employee is now the “Hoarders” lady who’s “not sure” of the whereabouts of her 74th cat. We were all in this point out of sloth collectively.

But it will have to prevent. Period One particular: Get your s - - t collectively, fellas.

Final Sunday, I took an eight-mile walk down Broadway from Washington Heights to the West Village to study our town. What did I discover? Manhattanites donning soiled sweatpants. Fruit of the Loom tank-tops on guys who’ve scarcely moved in a few months. A lot of Lycra, and Crocs for days. Thank goodness landscaping is permitted again, I imagined, for the reason that one pedestrian’s mop was no extended the purview of a barber.

The buildings were all in suggestion-leading form, preserve for some boarded up windows and graffiti. But the spirit of NYC — wanting superior although not supplying a damn — was nowhere to be identified.

I understood, for the to start with time, that garments define a community as a lot as architecture does. What is Fifth Avenue devoid of suits clutching briefcases sprinting to superior-stakes negotiations? In Chelsea, the lack of vibrant, formfitting attire disclosed that the location is not really so dazzling devoid of its very well-heeled people and prim waiters. I even get rid of a tear for the ankle-superior white socks of Occasions Square vacationers. Across the town, cult-like tones of grey and beige blanketed passers-by.

On Monday, let us get dressed.

I’m not declaring you’ve gotta operate out to Bergdorf’s and get curbside pickup for designer duds, though struggling shops would almost certainly value the business. Most guys who dwell right here already very own a button-down or polo shirt. They could unearth — gasp! — some pants from deep inside a drawer or the again of a closet. (Much better than that disgusting pair of shorts that hasn’t been washed in weeks.) Several females boast a mountain of beautiful skirts, blouses or frocks. And for footwear, prevent with the slippers or flip-flops. Snazzy sneakers are element of our New York id as a lot as pizza and staying let down by the Mets.

By the way, Twitter, really do not whine at me that it is summer. Seasons are not some new trend we have to have an understanding of and adapt to, like Billie Eilish. We’ve absent as a result of hundreds of oppressively hot Junes, Julys and Augusts — and even now managed to remain posh throughout them.

Right after all, we dwell in the fashion cash of the globe. We have chosen to inhabit a metropolis that’s both equally a hundreds of years-old magnet for hot famous people and an edgy oasis where by someone can walk around in overalls from center school, a lavender wig and thigh-superior boots — and show up in glossy journals.

Appropriate now, nevertheless, we are the Arby’s drive-thru window. French fries have spilled all in excess of our laps, and we really do not treatment.

But we will have to treatment. Not caring is a slippery slope towards getting to be Los Angeles.