I fly a lot, both for work and pleasure, and often I run into people I know, which can be embarrassing if I look very slobby. I’ve struggled to find business-casual-esque clothes that are also comfortable for traveling. I’ve been making do with loose leggings, but is there a more elevated look to which I could aspire? — Sharon, New York
There’s no question that airport fashion etiquette has been on a long, slow slide into shlubbiness. Once upon a time back in the mid-last century, flying was widely viewed as glamorous, and passengers got dressed up for the occasion in suits and heels. But for most people it has become an experience of being herded through lines like pack animals and jammed into a portable sardine can, and our wardrobes have become correspondingly no-frills. Now the most common air outfit is, as you point out, a pair of leggings with a hoodie or a sweatsuit.
I generally take issue with Karl Lagerfeld’s famous statement that “sweatpants are a sign of defeat,” but in this case it does pretty much sum up the situation. The way we dress to fly suggests we’ve surrendered to the mortification of the experience. And yet there is nothing worse than disembarking from a plane in full rumple, waiting for your bags at the luggage carousel, and running into someone you know while looking like the most crushed version of yourself.
(I say this from personal experience, given that twice a year most of the fashion world, including many models, seems to be on the same planes, flying from one collection capital to another.)
But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to maintain your sense of self, and self-respect, while flying even if you are, as I always am, stuck in the back of the plane and contorting yourself into weird pretzel shapes in order to try to sleep. This is one area where the spread of athleisure and the penetration of its priorities into every sector of fashion has made all the difference.
It turns out it is not all that difficult to disaggregate the qualities that have made leggings and/or sweats the fallback for air-wear — their comfort factor and washability — and apply them to clothes that look like actual … well, clothes.
Indeed, an ad hoc survey of fellow fashion folks yielded an interesting discovery: Most of them have developed a uniform for travel that they throw on for almost every flight, one that walks the line between the above qualities and public viewing.
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The post What Can I Wear on a Plane Besides Leggings and Sweats? appeared first on New York Times.
