What clothes should you wear at home?

Even sportswear, which we use at most a couple of times a week, we pay a lot of attention – it should both look good and fit well … But home clothes remain practically unattended – both by the fashion industry and by its owners themselves. Why?

Gestalt therapist Maria Andreeva explains this primarily by the fact that we are used to dressing exclusively “for others”. “With the help of clothes, we communicate with others: we strive to attract, win over or, conversely, keep a distance,” she explains. – And few people think about the fact that our suit produces exactly the same effect in relation to the one who wears it. Moreover, it affects us directly – through the sensations of the body.

Clothing is one of the earliest inventions of mankind. Over the centuries, man has changed his environment almost beyond recognition, creating megacities stuffed with electronics. Clothing, compared with these global changes, has changed surprisingly little.

“This is also why our perception of clothing is associated with very ancient, archaic layers of the psyche,” continues Maria Andreeva. – We can evaluate the relevance, high cost, originality of the costume in the first minutes when we see it. Having made this assessment, the mind simply ceases to pay attention to clothing. But its influence on others and the carrier itself unfolds further – through emotions, intuition, bypassing logical control.

The very first, main function of the suit is protection. And we use it skillfully enough, creating for ourselves a kind of “armor” for society, for entering the outside world. What is left for us?

Old things

Everyone is familiar with this habit: some old, worn-out things are so loved that we are ready to wear them until they are completely dilapidated – at least at home, since they cannot be put on anywhere else.

“You can call it a “successful meeting”: we like them, we like ourselves in them,” explains Maria Andreeva. We feel so good in them that we are not able to part with them. However, this attachment to old things is a powerful psychological anchor. Putting them on, we seem to plunge into that period of life when the thing was still “in work”. In addition to the need for stability, this may also hide fear, rejection of change. Coming home and putting on old clothes, a person seems to take a step back, gets stuck in this moment, in passivity.

Installations from the past

But the habit of wearing something that “it’s embarrassing to put on people, but it’s a pity to throw it away” has not only psychological, but also cultural roots. As you know, in the socialist era, the main value of a person was his social function. For a person as an individual, outside the team, no special value was expected.

“And many post-Soviet women and men still tend to treat themselves according to the “residual principle,” states Maria Andreeva. – Within the framework of Soviet ideology, taking care of oneself was considered some kind of indecent egoism. And buying things for the home is also senseless and wasteful selfishness: “after all, no one sees.” And if no one sees, then why?

Such a reverse side of demonstrativeness – to live life only in public – is often characteristic of women. Like Maugham in the play “Theater”: “When I’m alone in the room, I’m not there.” It is this feminine property – to look at oneself through the eyes of another – sometimes gives rise to another extreme: when the home wardrobe consists of exclusively frivolous silk robes, transparent peignoirs and spicy pajamas.

Relaxation and excitement

It would seem, what could be wrong with such an eroticized home wardrobe?

“Here, a clash of needs is manifested:“ for ourselves ”we need the opportunity to relax, complete comfort, and“ for a partner ”it is important for us to attract, excite, maintain interest,” explains Maria Andreeva. – In the first case, these are clothes that help relieve tension, in the other, on the contrary, they excite feelings. Some women fall into this trap: home clothes again become “clothes for another”, and not for themselves.

Such a contradiction is completely uncharacteristic of a man – it would hardly occur to him to acquire some kind of sexy clothes to wear at home.

For him and for her

It’s a fact: representatives of different sexes perceive clothes in completely different ways. “For a woman, clothes are a subject of special interest; she excites a woman at any age,” continues Maria Andreeva. – Her psycho-emotional connection with clothes – as with a component of her image, a part of herself – is absolutely organic. A man needs clothes not by itself, but for something: for protection, convenience, status, competitive advantage.

Therefore, he can be very pretentious about clothes for business, but at home he is completely indifferent to this subject. He does not endow clothes with an erotic meaning. At home, the most important thing for him is to “take off the armor”, relax.

“The unconscious feeling of home is peace, a refuge, a place where we can feel safe, “remove the masks” that society inevitably endows us with,” explains Maria Andreeva. Therefore, clothing for the home should feel like “as much as possible”. Everything matters: color, texture, silhouette, plasticity of the fabric, its ability to slide or envelop the body.

“When choosing a home wardrobe for a married couple, you should keep in mind that clothes can become an additional link that holds the two together,” adds stylist and image maker Anna Shilova. “Well-matched shades, silhouettes, textures create a sense of harmony between the appearance of two people – and this also affects their perception of themselves as a couple.”

Where we live

Work, professional success, and social status have long been among the dominant values ​​of modern man. In big cities, there are more and more singles who seek to convince themselves that family and home are secondary values. In Russia, the influence of the former, socialist ideology also affected: the very word “byt” in our lexicon has a rather negative (at best condescending) connotation.

“We can say that such values ​​as family, home, have suffered in our perception,” states Maria Andreeva. “Meanwhile, the house is the place where we spend the most important part of life. We not only rest, we restore strength between two stages of work – this is the place where we live. And the way we look reflects the degree of respect for both our loved ones and ourselves. Love and respect for the home as a place of life, for the family as a way of life – this is what it is worth investing money, effort, and creativity in.”

Three criteria for choosing a successful kit

Professionals advise to purchase three or four sets of things that can be easily combined with each other, selected depending on the functions, for example: to do household chores, mess with children, receive guests.

“There are three main criteria for creating a home wardrobe,” says Anna Shilova. – Firstly, convenience: the style of clothing should be such that it is easy to raise your hands, bend over or sit down to the child. Clothes should fit well on the body – in this sense, wrap-around clothes (all types of bathrobes) can hardly be called really comfortable. Much more comfortable are sundresses, tunics or sweater dresses.

Secondly, the suit must be practical – here the material becomes the most important, knitwear made from natural fibers is best. The color scheme is also important – too light clothes are impractical, and bright colors and geometric prints are not conducive to rest and relaxation. The optimal choice is quite rich natural shades: burgundy, chocolate, mustard, olive, blue.

The third criterion is aesthetics: things for the home should look good and help a person feel not only relaxed, but also attractive, despite the fact that they are completely different from “urban” clothes.

negligence

“Actually, home clothes – from a man’s dressing gown to a women’s negligee – arose in the European aristocratic wardrobe around the XNUMXth century,” says fashion historian Lyudmila Alyabyeva.

“Having arrived in Europe, most likely from Turkey, the dressing gown became an attribute of ostentatious idleness, a vestimentary – through a suit – declaration that its wearer does not need to work. We still talk about “negligence” if someone’s approach to work seems flippant or irresponsible.

Later, this piece of clothing, along with a nightcap, was chosen by philosophers as a symbol of freedom and ease. To Oblomov, the dressing gown seemed to be the focus of “the darkness of invaluable virtues: it is soft, flexible; the body does not feel it on itself; he, like an obedient slave, submits to the slightest movement of the body.

One of the varieties of this Sybarite clothing – with a shawl collar and satin cuffs – was called smoking, that is, a smoking robe. It was put on while visiting the smoking room right over the clothes, protecting it from corrosive smoke, and the ash from cigars that fell on silk lapels left no traces. Later, the tuxedo became shorter and turned from a smoking “neglije” into men’s clothing for high society events.

In the Soviet era, the dressing gown, having lost all its poetic associations, turned into a kind of uniform for the home – in a duet with a nightgown in the female version. In men’s, the role of homewear was occupied by legendary sweatpants or simply family underpants. This home outfit helped, on the one hand, to protect scarce weekend clothes from wearing out, on the other hand, this was how the steady habit of Soviet people was manifested to put on all the best “in people”.

Our contemporaries have a more complicated relationship with home clothes: for some, the opposition of clothes “for home” and “for going out” simply does not exist. For those who work at home (there are more and more of them), the question of “working” clothes is not at all worth it. And yet, for many, the very crossing of the border between home and the wider world is still marked by the act of dressing up at home. Taking off the armor after another working day, putting it in the wardrobe until the morning, we can finally relax. And, touching home clothes with every centimeter of your body, feel safe. Truly at home.”