By: Julia Fazzio
Media Editor
100 years ago in the U.S., everyday attire for men consisted of tailored three-piece suits, hats, and leather shoes. Women in the United States most frequently wore long skirts and dresses in their day-to-day lives. Fast forward to 2026, people seem to have little to no distinction between their pajamas and outfits they wear out. One might wonder what caused the relaxation of common wear and the sweatpants surge? It is hard to pinpoint a specific time or event that made this shift happen. Individuals should place more emphasis on their day-to-day styles to look more presentable and display confidence.
How you present yourself outwardly often reflects your inner feelings. Some signs of the dramatic decrease in professionalism point towards the Covid pandemic. It makes sense that after a year of not being able to leave your home regularly that casual and comfortable clothes would become more prevalent. However, it seems like the everyday wear shift from suits to sweats happened long before that. In reality, this change likely started with the hippie movement of the 1970s. A relaxed, peaceful vibe caused people to ditch the stuffy suits for jeans and a t-shirt. The new sense of casual kept on evolving, and starting in the 2000s, jeans became the new formal. Now, jeans are seen as something one would wear to the office and we grab sweatpants for something more casual.
While something like a choice of pants seems very unimportant in the grand scheme of things, it says something about the casual nature of this generation. We as a society are no longer trying to impress people with nice and expensive clothes instead focusing on the comfort and convenience of things. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously stated, “I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.” While as a society we love to push the idea of not judging a book by its cover, realistically, everyone pays lots of attention to everyone else’s outward appearances.
The constant change of styles and trends is an interesting thing in fashion, as trends always seem to come back. Suits and dresses being the dress code to go to the grocery store could be a common thing in the near future. On the other hand, styles might become even more casual and continue in the direction they have been going over the last one hundred years. While it is hard to predict what will be the trend in future fashion, if things keep going this direction, it seems that the art of class and formal styles will be lost forever in future generations.
(Sources: MovieWeb, Quora, Reddit)