Wistful for Work Wear

The Curated coat (similar)
Wilfred sweater (similar)
Mango trousers
Christian Louboutin heels
Fendi bag (similar)
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Stella & Dot ring
Maris Pearl Co. earrings (similar)
Location: The Manitoba Legislature – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Every day of 2020, it seems, is a new opportunity to feel wistful or nostalgic for some part of life that is no longer accessible. It’s gone on long enough that I’ve almost moved on from obvious things, like holidays and dinners out with friends. I miss those things daily, but there are so many more thing I miss, too, things that I never actually liked when they were part of my life, just because they were part of a life that was fuller and richer than my current life.

Like work wear. This past week, I’ve been wistful for work wear. I never expected to so much as think that sentence, never mind write it down, but here we are. My loathing of work wear developed quickly and simply enough. After university, I found myself in the same position as every other new graduate – I needed a job that would allow me to pay my bills. Unlike other new graduates, however, my degree was in Fine Arts, specifically creative writing, which has few practical applications. So I got a job at a credit union.

The feeling of being stifled came on almost immediately. I’d spent four years working on a craft but I spent my days counting money and balancing general ledgers. I was twenty-two, and lacked the insight to see that it was my own choices that had led me to this point. All I knew for sure was that I was frustrated and unhappy, and being frustrated and unhappy was worse when I was also forced to wear a blazer.

“In three words, I can sum up
everything I know about life:
it goes on.”
– Robert Frost

…this is a true story of an immensely privileged young woman facing reality for the first time and it is predictably banal. I know that. It’s my own. So I won’t dwell on the facts much longer. My job changed. And changed again. I found work that was more stimulating, although no more creative, and learned to find satisfaction, even creativity, in decidedly analytical work. But it was a long time before I truly embraced work wear as a concept.

There was so much I objected to over the years, much of which was legitimate. Corporate dress codes remain decidedly sexist, policing female bodies while scarcely suggesting that men need put on clothes to come to work. Beyond that, for years my work involved no in-person contact with clients, which made how I dressed absolutely irrelevant to my work, aside from the fact that it made me uncomfortable – no one is more productive when they’re uncomfortable. And most of all, work wear, the good stuff that is well tailored and made of beautiful, lasting fabrics, is expensive. Far beyond the budget of most people routinely required to wear it. (Me, until recently, included.) I love fashion. Buying poor quality pieces I didn’t even want affronted my sensibilities.

But life goes on. Circumstances change. By early 2019, I worked directly with clients and slowly began to appreciate how powerful work wear made me feel when I met them. That’s what I’m wistful for – the act of putting on an outfit and feeling suddenly ready to take on the world. The clothes that once held me back pushing me forward. These days, they mostly just hang in my closet. But the day we took these photos, I pulled some old favourites out again, just to remember what they felt like. I miss them, now. Just like I miss the bi-weekly work trips that once exhausted me.

It’s entirely possible that six months from now, I’ll be back in my work wear, feeling wistful for the days when I lived in sweats. That’s the funny thing about life – it always goes on. The things we loathe, we come to love. And the things we gladly say good-bye to, we eventually come to miss.

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