Best of 2020: Favourite Outfits

2020 was such a strange, surreal year. Fashion was probably the last thing on people’s minds, but since fashion is what we talk about here, I will apply the usual myopic lens for purposes of this and other year-end posts. Let’s talk about my favourite outfits.

Things started off much as one would expect at the beginning of the year, but by March veered into a different course altogether. Sartorially, I floundered for a while; switching to working from home, whilst trying to adjust to the day-to-day realities of life in a pandemic, took a lot of adjusting.

[Not to get off-track, but I think the psychological trauma of this whole experience will take years for most of us to unpack – even for those of us fortunate not to have been directly impacted by COVID or involved in the front-line efforts to contain it. I can’t imagine what those who were (and are) have gone through, and I can only hope that at some point when the immediate threat of the pandemic is over, governments will turn their attentions and funding towards mental health initiatives to ensure that people have the support they need to process their trauma.]

Once I settled into the “new normal” somewhat, I quickly realized that my “working from home” uniform would never look like others’ if I wanted to be happy. I love to dress up. It brings me joy and brightens up my day. Trying for that “Zoom casual” aesthetic was sapping my spirits – ok, maybe that sounds overly dramatic, but it was killing my buzz, for sure. So I said “to hell with loungewear” and plunged right back into my most feverish of fashion dreams.

This was the year I truly embraced my love for dramatic fashion. I moved away from the Prince avatar (I love wearing black in public, but alone at home, it felt too depressing on a daily basis) towards the excess of the Bohemian and the luxuriousness of the Artist. Not having to deal with public transit, the weather, or an actual office, I could simply indulge myself. A skirt with a fabulous train? Why not. It didn’t have to be “practical” as long as it was comfortable and made me feel happier wearing it.

This year was also a return to whimsy – not the twee kind, but the kitschy/surreal kind. I think that trend was a reflection of my mental space, trying to grapple with the world around me. Graphic tees and over-the-top prints began to take over my closet. There was a resurgence of colour. Rainbows. I can be quite literal in my wish fulfilment.

This was, unquestionably, the year of the skirt for me. I will always love dresses, but for some reason, I find myself gravitating towards separates, with skirts in particular. I think it’s the freedom to do random mash-ups of items and patterns; the kookier, the better. After all, if 2020 is not chaotic energy in its purest form, I don’t know what is.

I went back and picked some of my favourite outfits to share; the majority of them are from August onwards. I wouldn’t say that I’ve come to terms with 2020 as a whole, but I feel like I’ve finally found my style groove again – one small way to cope with the ongoing uncertainty and challenges.

You can see here that I really honed in on certain design details that I like. Midi length skirts and dresses; interesting patterns; draping details; texture. The things I buy now are cohesive from that standpoint. I wouldn’t say that I have a “uniform” per se, but I am pretty consistent in how I style the pieces I wear and what the final result looks like.

I cannot begin to fathom and will not attempt to predict what 2021 has in store, but I look forward to enjoying my current style groove and seeing where it ends up taking me.