Having Zoomed with designers, stylists, editors and celebrities over the past three months, I can promise you that, when working from home, everyone dials it down. Unless it’s a formal interview, a shirt and tie is too much for a video call. A pussy-bow silk blouse suggests you have gone stir-crazy. You are at home doing your work, not at home playing with a dressing-up box of pretending-to-be-at-work clothes.
A polo shirt is pretty much perfect. The collar gives it a sprucy vibe (all the buttons done up, please) but it isn’t pretending to be office wear. The meshed cotton, high street-sportswear type of polo shirt has always been a bit games kit for me, but watching the spring/summer 2020 shows at London fashion week last September, I was very taken with the knitted polo shirts in Rejina Pyo’s collection. And then there was a polo shirt dress on the Hermès catwalk for autumn/winter 2020, and that sealed the deal. The polo shirt I’m wearing here, by Jigsaw, was one of the few new season pieces already in my wardrobe when the shops closed in March. (At the time of writing, it’s still on sale, for £90. It comes in this lemon, or a deep midnight blue. The darker shade is chic and has longevity. But yellow does look good on Zoom.)
Excitingly, we should also consider what to wear on the bottom half, since going out of the house is once more a thing. The one garment I won’t be wearing with my polo shirt is shorts, because it’s just a bit… golf? I’m quite into wearing it with high-waisted jeans, which looks 1990s preppy without being juvenile.
My favourite pairing is with a smart skirt, as part of a phased re-entry into structured clothes. This skirt is an old one of mine, by the brilliant British designer Jonathan Saunders, who has since switched from making clothes to furniture. It caught my eye at the back of my wardrobe the other day because, in 2020, it suddenly looks like a rainbow. A rainbow is the most of-the-moment look of them all, I guess. But a polo shirt might be a bright idea, too.
• Jess wears polo shirt, £90, jigsaw-online.com. Skirt, her own. Sandals, £345, neous.co.uk.
