Get the Motivation to Dress Your Best Every Day

When you leave the house to go to work, getting dressed is a taken for granted. But when you are tele-working dressing up seems to be a waste of time unless a virtual meeting is scheduled. This post provides various reasons and motivations why to go thru the effort of putting on a nice outfit every day.

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Why Do Humans Dress?

Thermal comfort and protection of the skin motivated humankind to create clothes. If a tribe lived in a warm climate where thermal comfort was granted, still sentitive body parts where covered. And, of course, the protectional material was often used to exaggerate body parts and show them off. In these early cultures, often skin paintings served for decoration and adorment.

In regions with cold winter, protection from the elements was a primary reason (see above). Nevertheless, adorment became a second nature.

Clothing also served to indicate the societal status. No wonder that the less fortunate wanted to dress like those who had more. In Europe, but especially in Germany, this desire let to various Sumptuary Laws in Medevial times. Still today, there are many dress laws. They vary among the different states (Länder) of which Germany is composed. Many of them have laws and policies that prohibt wearing religious symbols (jewelry, headscarves, etc.) in schools and other public state-powered (not federal) institutions.

Why You Dress for Work

When my late mom and Granny Hannah dressed up, it was for special occasions. They were the generation that had a Sundays best. A Sundays best would get into the general wardrobe for weekday outfits after a year or two. Typically, at that time, the piece already looked old fashioned. Especially, when back at the time of purchase, it was the trend of the season.

Today we dress the opposite as those generations. Most of us work. We invest in work clothes for the week. We believe in sayings like

or powersuits, career style, etc. We believe that how we dress may have an impact on our career. Young female scientists even fear to dress fashionably because they believe it may harm their progress in their field. They fear to hit a glass ceiling.

Since even fashion-forward corporate style is uncomfortable, we dress down for the weekend. Becoming a tele-worker seemingly over night, totally screwed up our dressing behavior. We work from home where we were used to dress casually comfy. But now with a sudden a room at home became our office. Our brain is confused.

Sure we still dress up, when there is an online meeting with the boss, clients or colleagues. Well, because it seems that then the work world is more real. But in between? You are working from home! That’s where you recharged your batteries. Thus, you used to go for relaxing, lazy, comfy, not dress-up style.

We forgot why we dressed to begin with!

Reasons Why to Dress Every Day

Besides why in many regions of the world, humankind started to cover up, there are various other reasons to get dressed up every day. Not all of them are culturally rooted. Here a list of the most important reasons to get dressed up every single day:

• You dress to not die from hypothermia in winter and to not run into trouble with the police in summer. In other word, it is expected that you wear clothing.
• You don’t want to catch a cold. It is crazy to wear a bikini at 40 below.
• Don’t wait for your feelings to get into the mood to dress up. Dress up to change your mood. Learn more about upping your mood with color at the link.
• Being dressed and ready energizes you to get going.
• Clothes don’t look great on a hanger.
• It is better that you enjoy your beautiful clothes before they go out of fashion.
• It is better to enjoy your diamonds, jewelry, Louboutains, Gucci bags, etc. before your heirs sell them.
• Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life. - Bill Cunningham #fashionquoute #highlatitudestyle Click To Tweet
• Dress up so you never need to apologize for your appearance when your run into your boss while grocery shopping or when you get a call for an emergency work meeting starting in less than 10 minutes.
• Dressing up is an instant self-esteem booster. You feel better about yourself as you can hide what you think are your flaws.
• Your jeans watch your weight. They protect you from beefing up during lockdown. Yoga pants, leggings or sweat pants fail to have that build-in property to alarm you to watch what you eat.
• Dressing up means editing your wardrobe like a curator and following trends. These creative activities keep your brain young.
• Send the message to your kids/grandkids that it is worth getting dressed well.

How to Motivate Yourself to Dress during Lockdown or as Tele-worker

The following list provides various motivational tricks to dress up.

• Dress up because you were never that young as today.
• You have to see yourself in the mirror every time when you go to the bathroom. Do you really want to close your eyes to not look at a frumpy woman? You prefer to look at a well-dressed woman, right? Recall you don’t see so many people when you are locked down or work from home! So dress for yourself. It’s the only person you see on a regular basis these days.
• You have all those pretty clothes. You couldn’t wait to wear them when you bought them. Now just do it! You bought them because you love them. Love to be your own living Barbie doll.
• Recall that we are what we repeatedly do. Being an effortlessly stylish woman, then, is not an act, but a habit. Go for it.
• You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life. Without it, you’re nobody. I’m not talking about lots of clothes. — Diana Vreeland #quote #motivation Click To Tweet
• Don’t be in PJs all day. Don’t make PJs own you, but decide who you are, what you want to express by the way you dress. You don’t live in Alaska, where PJs in public are a fashion statement.
• You want to be remembered as the family style icon, not the family’s trashy tramp or even worse the family’s worst dressed.
• Fashion is your passion.
• In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous. — Elsa Schiaparelli #quote Click To Tweet Do you really want to miss the show?
• Getting dressed every day means that you are well prepared for the unexpected. It’s your secret wapeon or safety blanket.
• You dress for yourself, nobody else.
• Due to COVID-19 social life is at a minimum. All contacts are fast to avoid catching the virus. In such times, it becomes even more important to dress up. As Miuccia Prada once said: What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language. — Miuccia Prada #fashionquote #lifestyle Click To Tweet
• Life’s too short to blend in.
• Being dressed obviously annoys closed-minded people (like the guy who asks why YOU are so dressed up).

Don’t let your outfit be a random thing. Wear the right look in every situation by looking up what to wear when in How to Dress for Success in Midlife. Buy the book now.

Conclusions

You dress for yourself and you should consider yourself being important enough to be treated well by yourself. Not dressing up is unhealthy for your spirit and makes the entire pandemic even more miserable for you.

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Do you dress up when working from home? How do you style your look? Let me know, I am curious. Post your work-from-home outfits on IG and tag @highlatitudestyle so I can find your look.

References

Döbler, Hannsferdinand, 1972. Kultur und Sittengeschichte der Welt – Kleidung, Mode, Schmuck. Bertelsmann Verlag, München, Germany.

Mölders, N., 2019: Outdoor Universal Thermal Comfort Index Climatology for Alaska. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 9, 558-582. doi: 10.4236/acs.2019.94036.

Smithsonian, 2019. Women: Our Story. DK Publishing, New York.

Photos of me: G. Kramm

© 2013-2021 Nicole Mölders | All rights reserved