One of my favourite accounts on Instagram, which I stumbled upon by accident as I was looking for reels on Aleppo before a trip, shows Damascus and other Syrian cities as they were in the fifties and sixties. Men in crisp suits, ties and hats. Women in high heels and gloves. Make up: perfect. Hair: set. Manicures? Obviously.
There are similar accounts on social media that feature colourised footage of European and American cities through the decades: a paperboy handing a man in a crisp suit and hat a copy of that day’s newspaper for a few coins, a woman in an Edwardian dress helped off a horse and carriage. In the Syria videos, mainly shot in the 1950’s, men and women gazing at stands at the Damascus world fair in 1954 or standing in line to vote in the 1961 parliamentary elections.
As I was scrolling, wearing sweatpants and with my hair in a messy ponytail, I realized I hadn’t really worn trousers with a button or zipper in quite a few days. Now I do have an excuse: I don’t anchor in a TV studio anymore and I spend most of my days writing on a laptop at home.
But since Covid, I have largely stopped making that extra effort, even when I am called to venture out. And my footwear has suffered the most. I rarely lift myself up over an inch off the ground now, choosing instead to remain decidedly flat-shoed. The idea of wearing a heel that is not a wedge or a platform doesn’t even cross my mind anymore. I sometimes take a pair of gold Hermes 10 centimetre stilettos that I wore at my wedding rehearsal dinner and gaze at them like I would an old lover. I often marvel at how I ever spent hours in those gorgeous stilts dancing into the night when I can hardly wear them to the kitchen and back in my own house today.
And then there are the men of today, who, if we’re being honest, aren’t doing much better. Where our grandfathers wouldn’t have stepped outside without a tie and a proper collared shirt, many men now look as though they’ve just emerged from a campsite when they’re actually headed to a perfectly respectable office. The shift toward comfort and “casualisation” has all but dissolved old dress codes.
Travel attire, meanwhile, has taken things to an entirely new level. I remain quietly astonished by the sight of men boarding long-haul flights in flip-flops and shorts, a combination that even my fairly relaxed standards register as a high crime against style. Women, for their part, drift through airports swaddled in head-to-toe pyjamas, inflatable neck pillows perched like accessories, Birkenstocks paired with thick socks completing the look.
And before you tell me I’m lecturing anyone, I am not, and there are major exceptions (hello, Vogue Arabia readers!) I am only despairing at the collective descent into leisurewear that we, as a civilization, have embraced as the new normal. It’s been said that women’s feet have now widened and gained up to half a size because we don’t squeeze ourselves into tight shoes anymore. And our waists are finally breathing again (perhaps a bit too much in my case) as we have abandoned the notion that we must be cinched in, belted or corseted.
So why did polish give way to comfort? It’s been said that men stopped wearing hats when cars became ubiquitous and financially accessible. No need to wait outside or protect one’s head from the elements. As for women, the rejection of impractical and uncomfortable shoes and hats, chiefly driven by their entry into the workforce, has also contributed to the trend. Abandoning rigid dress codes wasn’t just aesthetic; it reflected a deeper reordering of daily life and priorities
That said, I miss something about who we once were. The rituals involved in getting ready for the world, gloves on hands and hats on heads. The old videos on Instagram made people look like they were stepping out onto a stage, showing up as the best version of themselves.
But perhaps more importantly than how we look, it’s how we feel when we go for a polished look that matters most.
It’s a quiet signal we send to ourselves: that we are worth the effort.
