Whether you attend a banquet, head out for an exercise or hang out with friends, you probably have certain styles of outfits that you prefer. They are all deeply connected to Fashion Design and like all Art & Design subjects, Fashion Design serves certain functions or purposes and it doesn’t have to be glamorous all the time.

​

According to the online Cambridge Dictionary, dress code is “an accepted way of dressing for a particular occasion or in a particular social group”. However, it is a lot more than fitting into the group. Firstly, it is evident that your appearance will directly affect others’ impression of you. In general, you can’t go wrong being neat and tidy with a good fit. We heavily rely on our vision when we make judgements, what we observe greatly influences our perceptions. For example, you would expect at a job interview, candidates would dress formally to show respect. When people go clubbing, some may go very flashy, while some would just dress casually.

​

As the pandemic is making massive changes to our world and putting our society on pause, the Fashion industry is adapting to our lifestyles because a lot of us are working from home now. How we dress can empower us in different ways since it affects our minds and feelings. For example, formal clothing can make you feel more confident, in control, focus better and think smarter.

​

Even though we are spending a lot of time at home, dressing to impress is still important to bring out the best in ourselves. The pandemic will eventually end and we should not allow ourselves to slack off now. It is easy to develop bad habits because it takes very little effort. The moment we stop dressing appropriately, we start to be decadent as clothing represents civilisation and intelligence. We should appreciate that the Fashion industry provides options to us, so we can dress to impress when we have the ability and choice to do so.

​

The world needs time to recover, but we need to restore ourselves first as individuals in order to restore the society. Let’s start doing so with the new year ahead!