All dressed up and no place to go.

Shoes optional at the home office.

Since the pandemic, we've all had to retreat indoors. What once were the exterior fashion shots of menswear influencers—handsomely dressed fellows in their suits and ties, strutting the streets of dramatic cities, perched on bar stools with negronis and newspapers—now has shrunk into an intimate space. The suited fellow in his impromptu home office at the dining room table, or relaxing on his couch, soft-padded socked feet incongruous against the sharpness of his suit. No shoes allowed in the house, after all.

Of course, this all assumes that folks are still suiting up at all. A good many menswear accounts have moved on to athleisure. Months go by when they won't even wear a garment with buttons on it. But to the suit and tie fetish crowd, the intimacy of work from home allows for certain illicit liberties, the revealing of their kinks in ways both subtle and overt.

To me, the most visible version of this is the number of suit and tie guys who suit up but leave their shoes off. Ostensibly, this is to display their socks and to present a tongue-in-cheek version of the home office, playing on the disparity between the corporate uniform and the comfort of his socked feet. But to those of us who find allure in such details, the message is all too clear.

What will become of the suit and tie fetish, now that the world lives in sweatpants and pajamas? I don't know for sure. I have a theory that suits and ties might become more like leather gear over time: a historical artifact, a costume worn as fetish or kink, an allusion to corporate structures of hierarchy and power ripe for erotic subversion. To those of us who identify heavily with the suit fetish, this is a difficult truth to swallow. But I find it easier to acknowledge this new reality than to try to pretend it doesn't exist.

Dress for yourself first. After all, everyone else is.