Comfort vs. Style - [website] Published: 8th of Aug 2011 by: Miss Knowitall
Women who work from home often find themselves dressing more for comfort and less for style – and who wouldn’t?...
...but no one wants to get stuck in a frumpy rut, so how can you balance comfort and style to avoid this?
First you’ve got to answer the question: does wearing my oversized sweatshirt and baggy jeans make me feel less productive than if I was wearing a smart shirt and pressed pair of pants? Or is this one of the freedoms working from home affords you that gets your creativity flowing?
Figuring out what your needs and your business’s needs are is an important first step in deciding whether or not to put a more concerted effort into your wardrobe, after all you can’t afford to let your business suffer.
If you find that wearing smarter clothes makes you feel more organised, efficient and productive (like it does me) it might be a good idea to step up your dress code, and thus improve both the amount of work you get through and your overall mood.
This can be difficult if you’ve got pets running around the house and downright impossible if you’ve got kids, so you’ll need to find a happy medium between smart and stain resistant before trying to get dressed up.
On the other hand, however, maybe being able to work in your PJs and slippers is what gets you out of bed in the morning, in which case having to don a pantsuit would do nothing more than depress you. You’ve got to be careful though because wearing nothing but tracksuit pants and the hubby’s t-shirts could see you becoming a fashion disaster waiting to happen – imagine a client making an unexpected house call or bumping into one when you step out for milk….
Perhaps what would work best is planning to go to a wi-fi friendly coffee shop or restaurant a few times a week, which would get you into the habit of dressing a bit more smartly when leaving the house.
Alternatively, try turning your ‘comfy’ clothes into fashionable clothes; leggings, sweater dresses, scarves, boots, waterfall cardigans etc. are all mightily comfortable, but at the same time speak of a chic type of style.
If you work from home, how do you dress – smartly or more comfortably? Do you find wearing smart clothes an impracticality at your house? Does wearing dressier clothes make you feel more focussed and confident?
