Culture Diary: Loungin’, or How Capitalism Ruined Sweatpants
By: Jill Gallagher
Tags: Sweatpants, Shopping, Fashion, Loungewear, Capitalism

Photo by Mike Von on Unsplash

I miss getting dressed. Like most people, I’ve taken to calling jeans “hard pants” and pretty much avoid wearing them at all costs. At this point, I really only put them on to go grocery shopping, which is also my only real big outing these days. Otherwise, I wear sweatpants, leggings, and pj pants to sit around my apartment and to walk my dog in loops around my building. I’ve become the person who wears my slippers outdoors. Most days, let’s be real, I don’t wear a bra, and forget about makeup. Literally—I’ve forgotten how to wear makeup.

Sometimes I look at the dresses in my closet; the cute leopard-print booties I got on clearance from Madewell in March, when the pandemic still seemed like something we’d come out of in a month or two, at most; the pairs of colored tights rolled into neat rows on a closet shelf; and I feel something like nostalgia.

Earlier today, I got an alert about a sale at J. Crew Factory (I mean, they’re always having sales, but every once in a while, you gotta check it out). Cute sweaters for $30! Tartan blouses with puffy sleeves! T-shirts with clever sayings! A slinky cheetah-print skirt! Matching pajama sets! I clicked through page after page of discounted goods, only putting a solitary pair of gray sweatpants in my cart. Even the matching pajama sets seemed like too much effort, to be honest. Who was I trying to impress with matching pjs? Gizmo? He could care less. Ultimately, I ended up closing out of the site, leaving the sweatpants alone in my metaphorical shopping cart (what happens to all the unwanted stuff in all the metaphorical carts?) because I’ve been working hard to resist the urge to buy things I don’t need or that won’t bring me joy. It was the second time today I did it — earlier, I’d filled a different metaphorical cart with whimsical Christmas ornaments and then abandoned it to the ether of the internet.

I miss shopping and getting dressed, but truthfully, I’m appreciating the permission to be comfortable 24/7, to let my body just be soft and unencumbered. There are days I don’t shower, and that’s okay! Most nights I still wash my face and put on serums and moisturizer, but it’s also not a nightly occurrence. I haven’t colored my hair since January and I kind of like the washed-out, ombre-ish situation happening.

For a long time, I equated sweatpants with grubbiness, with looking like a slob. It was what the kids at my elementary school wore and though I was just like them, I wanted to believe I wasn’t, so I never wore sweatpants. I don’t think I wore sweatpants until college, and even then, I carefully purchased a slim-fitting pair from the Gap, and only wore them in my dorm.

Now, I have a few pairs, and I want more, because clearly I don’t want to be wearing anything else these days. My favorites are these, from Lou & Grey, that I liked so much I got them in two colors, something I never do. But they were less expensive when I bought them last summer, and now they’re in high demand — only one color and size (XL) remains in stock on the website.

Capitalism has even ruined sweatpants. Athleisure has been a thing for a while now, but sweatpants are a step further down the rung of dressing for comfort, and In These Times, they cost nearly as much as designer jeans. How did we get here? A company called Gravel & Gold sells sweatpants for $150, you can get a pair of “All Day” sweatpants from Outdoor Voices for $88, $148 joggers from somewhere called Leset that is apparently a “celebrity favorite,” and purple “heavyweight recycled cotton track pants” for $120 from Pangaia. You can even get cashmere sweatpants (if you want them in XS dark blue teal!). (I’m not going to lie, I’ve thought about it….but what stops me is that you can’t throw them in the washing machine and you KNOW I’m not going to the dry cleaners right now…)

Sweatpants, that most humble of garments, are now a status symbol, apparently. But would anyone even be able to tell if you wear a pair of old school Champion sweatpants instead of Gravel and Gold? Is there an appreciable difference in the level of comfort afforded by the pants with the price tag in the triple digits? Honestly, I’m probably never going to find out. I think $50 is my sweatpants threshold, even if they’re all I’m wearing. Also, they’ll be covered in dog hair within 10 minutes of putting them on, so what’s the point?

Do you have a favorite pair of sweatpants? What’s your loungewear of choice, if you have the luxury of being able to work from home?