Dress to impress yourself

Just because we've got nowhere to go right now, doesn't mean we can't dress to impress ourselves! In fact, there's no better time to reassess our approach to dressing 'smart'. 

With much of the world on lockdown, social media has afforded us a unique insight into human behaviour during this crazy time, not least how people are dressing in their homes, whether they are remote working or using the time to kick back and recharge. From this vantage point, one begins to see certain tribes emerge and evolve, especially when it comes to style. The early social media hashtags, such as #quarantineandchill, were a clue to how people were going to approach their stay-at-home style. Cue all manner of sweatpants, sweatshirts, tees, hoodies and pyjamas. With no clients to meet, no colleagues to impress, no dress codes to uphold, much of the world took the situation as an invitation to dress down, and dress down they did! 

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But after a week or so, donning loungewear day after day - as comfortable as it is - begins to take its toll on the average person’s psyche. We soon learn that we want to appear impressive even if only for our own state of mind. We’re reminded why we make an effort to dress well each and every day - not because of superficiality or vanity, but because how we dress profoundly influences how we feel. And so it was brilliant to see the sartorial tribes on social media rifling through their wardrobes for black tie options for Friday night drinks - in their kitchens. It was fun watching people rethink their stay-at-home wardrobe, choosing smarter tailoring to slip into on a Monday morning with nowhere to go but to their laptops.

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Sartorial style can be anything you want it to be. A classic navy blazer can be made to look effortlessly casual with the addition of a Breton stripe tee or sweatshirt; a pair of shorts can be dressed up with a beautifully cut shirt; smart pleated trousers can be an integral part of a casual summer look by pairing them with a camp-collar shirt; a suit, that most uniform piece of menswear can become the very definition of cool when crafted from pastel linen and worn with a polo shirt.

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The point is, tailoring needn’t be pigeonholed. ‘Smart’ has many nuances, and hardly any of them are stuffy, as our linen suiting collection for SS20 will attest. We have crafted a number of different jacket styles in pastel tones cut from 100% Irish linen that can be worn as suits or separates and are perfect for summer engagements. The beauty of linen, besides being lightweight, is that casual crumple it develops over time, softly shaping around the contours of one’s body. Linen shirting is also a focus for us this season, in the shape of field shirt-inspired Safari styles to classic cutaway collar shapes, which add a little Riviera chic to your lockdown aperitivo time don’t you think?