Soft Clothes

Used to be, that if asked about the categorization of clothes, I’d have responded as follows: athleisure (which in the old days we just called sweats), casual, work casual, professional, dressy, and formal.

However, post-Covid and post-Retirement, there is another, far more important categorization that trumps all the others, IMHO.  And that is, soft clothes and hard clothes.  Really, all clothing can be boiled down to those two descriptors.

That’s what it has come down to for me.  And guess where I fall?  If you thought soft clothes, you thought right.

Covid lockdown and all that remote working was my first introduction to wearing soft clothes pretty much 24/7.  What a joy! Soft, comfy clothing all the time vs just in the evenings when you got home from work and on the weekends putzing around the house.  I even ditched the bra, but that is another topic for another blog on another day.

Back to soft clothing.  The thing is, all the other types of clothing mentioned above could potentially fit into the soft clothing category.  The key to it isn’t what kind of clothing it is, but the material of which it is made. 

For instance, you might have thought that any athleisure clothing item would automatically fall into the soft clothing category.  And the answer there is, no, it does not.  To wit, an awfully uncomfortable pair of athleisure pants that were just too constricting and the material was just not soft enough to qualify as well, soft clothes.  I was uncomfortable about two minutes into putting them on. I finally donated them to a thrift store the other day.

But conversely, there are some types of clothing, just by their very nature, that will not ever fall into the soft clothes category.  Jeans, for example.  They are the epitome of hard clothes.  And in my quest to wear soft clothes for as much of my waking hours as possible, I have now turned to jeans that have some stretch and give in them.  Do they have any nylon or spandex, or whatever it is that makes them a bit stretchy? I will buy them.  How did I ever wear the old-school, 100% cotton denim jean? 

Even with a partially stretchy jean though, it still falls into the hard category.  I remember when wearing jeans, a casual category item of clothing, was well, casual.  Not now.  Not for post-Retirement me.  Wearing jeans is like dressing up.

We were headed out to a Christmas market the other day.  I was wearing my soft clothes. 

Ernie said, “You are gonna change, right?”

I said, “What do you mean? What’s wrong with what I am wearing? We are going to a Christmas market.  I can’t wear soft clothes to a Christmas market? Are you telling me I have to wear hard clothes?”

Ernie kind of laughed, and said, “I guess you can wear whatever you want.”

But it was too late.  The seed was planted that our excursion required hard clothing.  So I changed into my jeans, albeit ones with some nylon/spandex stretch to them, and a nice sweater that was, wait for it, soft.  At least the upper half of my body would be comfy.

And what was the first thing I did when I got home? I changed back into my soft clothes.  And so did Ernie.

I should be glad that I live in the time that we do now.  For sure, I would have been wearing house dresses/house coats that both my Grandmothers used to wear.  They were clearly on to something back then.  They too understood the importance of soft, comfy clothing. But back then they didn’t have too many options.  At least today I have a plethora of soft clothes choices that are or can be at least somewhat stylish. 

I think there’s an opportunity for more soft clothing options.  Fashion industry, are you reading this? Please make more soft clothes! Ones that are stylish, that look good, and that one can wear to a Christmas market.

Covid and retirement have let the genie out of the bottle.  And her name is Comfort.  And she ain’t going back in.