Shortly before lockdown, I bought some Levi’s Ribcage jeans: a high-waisted style made of stiff, zero-stretch denim that I thought fitted nicely with the 1970s Scandi mum vibe I aspire to. Admittedly, I felt a little shrink-wrapped around the middle, but for a day at the office, they were tolerable.
I decided to wear them again this week, while working from home. Within four minutes I was done. My internal organs felt like squashed commuters on a pre-corona train carriage; my flesh was imprinted with surgical-looking lines. And this wasn’t because they had “shrunk in the wash”, ie I’d ballooned on the buttered sourdough diet. It was that after more than three months away from the office, I could no longer tolerate anything less than stretchy, cashmere-soft, fleece-tastic comfort.
It’s part of a cultural shift. Under lockdown many of us have become homely in our clothes and habits: baking, tending to our herbs and singing to them at night (no, just me?).