Lockdown is over, so stop dressing like slobs

Now that we’re open, let us discuss about dresses.

For twelve weeks, because the coronavirus lockdown started, New Yorkers have been slumming it in their pajamas and sweaty gymnasium apparel. They are “working from home” — still dressing like slobs. From CEOs and Broadway stars to Wall Streeters and revenue clerks, everyone has been united by elastic waistbands and a absence of deodorant.

Time for a Zoom meeting! You open your laptop computer and are shocked to uncover that your manager, who earns in the substantial 6 figures, has turned into Grizzly Adams with a grease-stained Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Your formerly Kind-A co-employee is now the “Hoarders” girl who’s “not sure” of the whereabouts of her 74th cat. We were all in this condition of sloth alongside one another.

But it have to end. Stage A single: Get your s - - t alongside one another, fellas.

Very last Sunday, I took an 8-mile stroll down Broadway from Washington Heights to the West Village to survey our metropolis. What did I discover? Manhattanites donning filthy sweatpants. Fruit of the Loom tank-tops on gentlemen who’ve hardly moved in 3 months. Tons of Lycra, and Crocs for days. Thank goodness landscaping is authorized once more, I imagined, because a single pedestrian’s mop was no lengthier the purview of a barber.

The buildings were all in idea-top condition, preserve for some boarded up windows and graffiti. But the spirit of NYC — hunting very good though not offering a damn — was nowhere to be observed.

I recognized, for the to start with time, that dresses define a community as significantly as architecture does. What’s Fifth Avenue with out fits clutching briefcases sprinting to substantial-stakes negotiations? In Chelsea, the absence of colorful, formfitting apparel discovered that the place is not pretty so shiny with out its perfectly-heeled inhabitants and prim waiters. I even shed a tear for the ankle-substantial white socks of Situations Sq. vacationers. Across the metropolis, cult-like tones of grey and beige blanketed passers-by.

On Monday, let us get dressed.

I’m not indicating you have gotta operate out to Bergdorf’s and get curbside pickup for designer duds, though struggling suppliers would almost certainly respect the business. Most gentlemen who reside below currently personal a button-down or polo shirt. They could unearth — gasp! — some pants from deep inside of a drawer or the again of a closet. (Greater than that disgusting pair of shorts that has not been washed in weeks.) Quite a few ladies boast a mountain of wonderful skirts, blouses or frocks. And for footwear, end with the slippers or flip-flops. Snazzy footwear are portion of our New York id as significantly as pizza and becoming disappointed by the Mets.

By the way, Twitter, really do not whine at me that it is summer season. Seasons are not some new craze we have to recognize and adapt to, like Billie Eilish. We have absent by means of hundreds of oppressively very hot Junes, Julys and Augusts — and nevertheless managed to stay posh through them.

Following all, we reside in the manner cash of the globe. We have selected to inhabit a metropolis that’s the two a hundreds of years-outdated magnet for very hot celebrities and an edgy oasis wherever someone can stroll all around in overalls from center faculty, a lavender wig and thigh-substantial boots — and seem in shiny magazines.

Appropriate now, even so, we are the Arby’s push-through window. French fries have spilled all over our laps, and we really do not care.

But we have to care. Not caring is a slippery slope toward becoming Los Angeles.