What a difference a few months can make. Flash back to early 2020 and one of the most steadfast maxims of fashion’s golden rulebook was that loungewear must never, ever be worn when working at home. Slippers, dressing gowns and most contentious of all – the pyjama – flagged a fast track to professional exile, cheerfully sound-tracked by daytime TV. This was a rule with a zero-tolerance policy, a non-negotiable situ of well-known risks for anyone but the most ardent bohemian/professional gamer. Nothing tricky to get your head around here – no maddeningly changeable fashion nuances to catch the uninitiated out: keep it smart if you want to keep it together.
Jump forward to autumn and it’s a very different story. Working from home (WFH) has transitioned to a new plane where, sartorially speaking, there’s been a shift from partially replicating work mode to get into your groove (business on top, anything goes below) towards dressing to summon up your personal muse or motivation. Enter a new fashion vibe based on the gloriously life-enriching art of lounging that’s as true for those heading into hibernation season as people who’ve decamped to warmer climates, where workspaces with a field or sea view are all about productivity with a less rigid edge.
Most of us are novices at mastering this new casual-dom but, thankfully, high calibre lounging has plenty of guiding lights. The legendary American writer Truman Capote once said,“I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy” while British graphic design guru Peter Saville habitually delivers the goods by remaining in his dressing gown until late afternoon (“for all of my grown-up life I have not been able to work if I was wearing formal trousers”). Winston Churchill famously regularly worked from his bed until lunchtime while artists Salvador Dali and Jean-Michel Basquiat both made masterpieces in their nightwear. New York artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s commitment to ultra-public pyjama-wearing has long been the stuff of legend.
But using loungewear to harness a higher state of home employment doesn’t mean the dress code is dead. Consider this a new limbo genre where ‘smart soft’ equals confidence, a liberating (half) state of undress. Of course, the trick to getting it right lies in superior quality tools. Just as fashion editor’s will say, ‘there are pyjamas and then there are pyjamas’, there is also a hierarchy for slippers.
MULO knows this, which is why we’ve created a range of luxury mens slippers for WFH visionaries of every denomination: backless slippers, leather slippers, suede slippers lined in sumptuous shearling as well as brand new designs in corduroy and velvet. Annexing comfort and creativity, the cool slipper’s time has come.
