back to article Reg fashion special: Top designer says 'video chat accessories' are in for spring!

The fashion industry has carved itself a new niche – outfits and accessories for video chats – but kept all its old double standards about what different people need to look their best. As spotted by CNN journo Sonia Moghe, Gap's posh workwear brand Banana Republic shows off the spring trend with a new "What to wear at home" …

  1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

    A phrase I leaned last week is "business mullet" - shirt on top with boxers below, the ideal outfit for video conferencing

    1. disgruntled yank

      A quick descent

      "Business mullet" when I first heard it a dozen years ago was sports jacket with jeans. Ties might have been part of that.

      1. Kubla Cant

        Re: A quick descent

        I expect "Business mullet" will be what I end up with after being stuck at home for three months without a haircut.

    2. JohnG

      ..until you go for a piss and forget to turn off your video before you stand up.

  2. Chris G

    What would we do without fashion?

    Answers on a postcard can be posted in any receptacle affixed to a lampost.

    It's nice that fashion designers should think of those working from home in these difficult times, obviously want them to look their best, the fashion companies will go all out to have those designs manufactured by children in sweatshops that are located in countries that have no lockdow in place.

    Might I suggest a line of pre-pizza stained T shirts for those working from basements?

    1. Julz

      Re: What would we do without fashion?

      Unfortunately we don't yet have a B-Ark...

      1. joeW

        Re: What would we do without fashion?

        Come back, Telephone Sanitisers - all is forgiven.

        1. T. F. M. Reader

          Re: What would we do without fashion?

          @joeW: Come back, Telephone Sanitisers - all is forgiven.

          They are back!!! So says the BBC.

    2. Aladdin Sane

      Re: What would we do without fashion?

      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

      Oscar Wilde

  3. Shadow Systems

    Fashion is easy!

    *Inflates the bag of my neon plaid bagpipes, squeazes the bag betwixt my knees, & wanders around naked & twerking to my incredibly excrutiating disco polka mashups*

    Trousers are Evil! Death to Pants!

    *The Levan Polka*

    1. Blofeld's Cat
      Pint

      Re: Fashion is easy!

      Fine for the office, but are you going to tone this down a bit now that you are working from home?

      If not I suggest adding a bowler hat and a cravat to give it that corporate look.

      1. Shadow Systems

        Re: Fashion is easy!

        Tone down? Hell no! Nudity for everyone everywhere every time!

        *Wanders off naked, twerking, & playing a disco-polka version of Fugue in D minor*

    2. Chris G

      Re: Fashion is easy!

      I just had to Google twerking.

      Consider yourself off my Zoom list!

      1. Shadow Systems

        Re: Fashion is easy!

        I win teh internettywebbytubez! Free cookies for everyone!

        *Wanders off naked, twerking, & playing Police's "I'll be watching you"*

        1. Blofeld's Cat
          Go

          Re: Fashion is easy!

          "Police's "I'll be watching you""

          May I politely suggest that "Don't stand so close to me" by the same hot-rhythm combo might be equally appropriate in the present climate.

    3. joeW

      Re: Fashion is easy!

      Korpiklaani's version of Ievan Polka I hope?

      1. jelabarre59

        Re: Fashion is easy!

        Korpiklaani's version of Ievan Polka I hope?

        Nah, the Hatsune Miku version.

        1. joeW

          Re: Fashion is easy!

          Ah, the classic Loituma rendition. Or as I like to call it, the start of the deep and twisted rabbit-hole that led me to Koripklaani...

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Re: Fashion is easy!

            Mornington Crescent!!

  4. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Really...

    Desperate people flogging desperate tat.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amateurs. Video chat accessories are things you leave in the background such as whips, chains, spatulas and the occasional blow up doll. If it's an important meeting always have a scotch egg to hand so when someone makes what they think is an important point loudly say "I couldn't agree more" and take a nice big bite out of it.

    1. Captain Scarlet

      I made the mistake of leaving my folding ladder, work mate and drill behind me, so now everyone is saying they'll get me to do their DIY tasks once this is over :(

      1. jelabarre59

        I have my two shelving units of records (yes, 12" vinyl) in the background. Oh, and a red hat hanging on the wall.

        1. Captain Scarlet

          Ah, yes someone was trying to get me to show them what was on my bookshelf.

          I think most people are bored, I bet someone will suggest you DJ for them for some evening entertainment.

      2. GlenP Silver badge

        Hmm, visible in mine are a couple of toolboxes, a pair of ear defenders and a workmate plus spare monitors and a model railway baseboard.

        They already know I'm a sad git so I'm not bothered!

      3. CountCadaver Silver badge

        simple make an utter c*nt out of it, never ask you to do anything again

        same for making tea, make it like dishwater (ideally with added dish soap) and salt not sugar with lukewarm water in a manky mug....never be asked to make tea again

    2. Colin Wilson 2

      "whips, chains, spatulas and the occasional blow up doll."

      Spatulas ??!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You can get them here.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BUDwj_mXKE

  6. SVV

    Gap’s posh workwear brand Banana Republic

    How quaint, they just picked a boringly literal name describing how their government is currently run.

  7. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker

    Ah, to be part of the military-industrial complex

    ...where cameras are a hyuuuuuge no-no and all meetings are webcasting slide decks / spreadsheets / etc. instead of video. (Just don't have an embarrassing desktop wallpaper!)

    No one wants to see my messy home office anyway. Been in this house almost a year and I'm still trying to organize old paperwork (whole boxes of paid bills, receipts, etc.). If I do manage to sort them, I have a ceiling fan that still needs to be changed (ugly 80s/90s brass affair out, modern brushed nickel in); new matching cabinet/drawer handles are on their way from the Home Despot's warehouse. And maybe re-sort the bookshelves we randomly refilled just after the move. THEN this room might be camera-ready.

    Taking months to improve on the semi-minor things in our living space: still better than the years we wasted waiting to improve anything in the last house. Besides, procrastination is like the bureaucracy at work: it comes standard with this industry/customer.

  8. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    This is easy for me. I use my home tower PC for remote working. It has no webcam. While, as a technician, I initially got some ribbing for this, I don't normally need a webcam, and actually consider it an unnecessary potential security hole. When I got some comments about this, I said if work wants me to use a webcam, they can buy me one and send it to me.

    So, while I do wear my normal work uniform (which is a shirt and jeans), this is more for me than anyone else. It's important to maintain a sense of what is normal.

    And yes, I do have a laptop with a perfectly functional webcam, usually the kids are using this for homework.

    1. staringatclouds

      Me too, I do have a plug in webcam somewhere, in a box, in the attic, in a filing cabinet, next to the leopard ...

      (Sorry Mr Adams)

      I used it once many years ago

      I have a motorised telescope, I'm thinking of attaching it to that if I ever find it again

  9. vir

    And So It Begins

    Anyone else reminded of the aside in Infinite Jest where David Foster Wallace describes the evolution of videotelephony through facial software enhancement, followed by physical masks of your own enhanced face, then of your whole body, then of your surroundings until a video call became "essentially a heavily doctored still-photograph, one of an incredibly fit and attractive and well-turned-out human being, someone who actually resembled you the caller only in such limited respects as like race and limb-number, the photo's face focused attentively in the direction of the videophonic camera from amid the sumptuous but not ostentatious appointments of the sort of room that best reflected the image of yourself you wanted to transmit".

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: And So It Begins

      After a week of wfh we are all using stuffed toys wearing headphones in our team meetings

      To be fair most of us are not exactly scenic at the best of times

  10. A. Coatsworth Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    >>we present some shots of Register staff in their working from home outfits

    Thanks heaven the corporate network won't load pics from Twitter! I was already reaching for the gel alcohol to wash my eyes.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Green?

    How long before we start seeing personal green screens?

    Thank the goddess I'm retired.

    P.S. At least we now know the real identity behind all those "Anonymous Coward" posts.

    1. CountCadaver Silver badge

      Re: Green?

      You can buy webcam apps that can green screen your background to create the illusion of a house beautiful office instead of a disorganised real life chaos theory demonstration (for example my wife's art studio.....I'm contemplating a skip outside the window and shovel to resolve it)

  12. Malcolm Boura

    Understated fashion

    Work for British Naturism. Much less hassle and much, much cheaper. https://www.bn.org.uk

  13. staringatclouds

    Seriously ?

    Has no one made a "Max Headroom" filter for video conferencing ?

    Just put up a green screen & be anywhere in the world or out of it

    Definite gap in the market there

  14. JohnG

    The organisations I am working with all have policies to disable video, in favour of desktop/document sharing, because many people are finding their broadband and/or the organisation's videoconferencing setup can't handle so many people simultaneously using video.

  15. Daedalus

    The struggle is real

    From monitoring an old acquaintance on Twitter, and her feminist journalist coterie (yes, they do write for the Grauniad), it turns out that video chats expose that dread horror, the old lady neck. The article's image of an ad for neckerchiefs seems particularly appropriate.

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