The Wall Street Journal: What if Working in Sweatpants Unleashed Your Superpowers?

Office dress codes are part of HR handbooks. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, with so much of the global workforce still working remotely, “at-home” and “at-work” personas blurred, and many people have had greater autonomy in choosing what to wear during the workday.

“One 2020 survey found that 75% of remote workers have gone casual from the waist down during the workday. Taking this choice to an extreme, one in 10 workers report wearing only underwear from the waist down during video conference calls!” according to an Academy of Management Discoveries article. “This mixed-attire strategy of ‘business on top, party on the bottom,’ dubbed the ‘Zoom mullet,’ has been hailed as the ‘perfect pandemic work-from-home attire’ [by the Urban Dictionary]. The prevalence of this tendency to dress for work only ‘up top’ is reflected in a significant drop in pant sales relative to shirts for major retailers such as Walmart and Zara.”