Today’s story in the ‘Lockdown Clothing‘ project is from Ilu, who is a software developer and member of the goth subculture in Germany. In his free time he spend time with his wife, the cat, his Brompton bicycle and his (retro) computers at home. You can find him on Twitter as @dec_hl.
1) Can you describe what your personal style was like before lockdown – what did you wear most often?
I actually have (had?) multiple clothing styles. One is the day to day style I wear for work, one would be the stuff at home and the last one are the clothes I wear for festivals and concerts.
At work I usually go for casual style and opt for funny T-shirts (lots of unicorns) and cargo pants. I try to avoid wearing formal clothes like button-down shirts and ties because I want to set a contrast to the rest of my department.
At home I love to go with said T-shirts, colorful printed leggings, harem pants or long skirts.
Festivals and concerts are my happy place, because I’m able to experiment wildly with clothes. I love to see and be seen. I love kilts, laced boots and corsets (some years ago I was tightlacing 24/7, but I dropped that for several reasons). I also love to wear clothes were I can show off my tattoos… 🙂
2) Has your approach to clothes changed as a result of the current situation?
Well, with concerts/festivals gone I started intermixing these styles into my daily wear. I started to dress up at home just for fun or for video calls with friends. For work wear see below…
3) Has your approach to purchasing clothing changed as a result of lockdown? How so?
During lockdown I spent an insane amount of money on clothes I can never wear at work. Only at home, or (preferably) at festivals.
4) What is your daily routine for getting dressed to remain at home? If you don’t have one, why is that?
The lockdown was/is a little of a mixed bag for me. My work requires me to still go regularly to my office and I completely switched to my bike for that (using public transport beforehand). The office is quite deserted compared to non-pandemic times and I only meet a handful of people there. When working from home I usually opt for comfy clothes, so on these days dressing basically feels like weekends. When going to the office I now dress twice, once for riding the bike and then the clothes to change into at work. The amount of changing depends heavily on the temperature/weather.
5) Is there anything you feel you can wear now that you couldn’t in ‘normal’ times? Why? And is there anything you miss wearing (and why do you not wear it)?
As I mentioned above I started mixing my three styles. In spring/summer I used to wear my printed leggings under my cargo shorts at work when it still was to cold for bare legs. I also started wearing laced boots to work (only 14 holes, not the 30 hole ones, yet). In the last warm day in autumn I went all in and wore one of my black kilts to work with an opaque black leggings under it. That was quite an interesting experience and it felt really good as none of the people at work made any negative comments about it. I’m planing on doing that again as soon as it is warmer again…
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