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An apt and timely question, if there ever was one. How do we work efficiently in the same space where we eat, relax and, well, do everything else at the moment? And, more importantly, how do we do it in style? The menswear critic at The New York Times, Mr Guy Trebay, has it figured out.

“My WFH set up is kind of a comedy,” Mr Trebay says. “Imagine a ThinkPad balanced on a beloved National Geographic Atlas Of The World, a velvet slipper chair in which I slump like ‘Whistler’s Mother’ next to a window facing a street closed for the duration of the pandemic and turned into a playground for a private girls’ school – kindergarten through second grade. 

“It’s here that I write my Times stories and conduct FaceTime interviews (using Jabra Evolve265 headphones, though I’m planning to ask Santa for a pair of Bose 700s) and generally attempt to keep the tone professional despite the background racket of dozens of seven-year-olds in pinafores screaming ‘Gichie-gichie ya ya da da’. (It remains to be understood why the one-per-centers of Manhattan are willing to fork over $56,000 a year so their tykes can learn the raunchy lyrics to ‘Lady Marmalade’.)

“The truth is I have worked on the road so long I can make do in almost any place. Still, wherever I am, in whatever city or hotel, I enjoy the civilising act of getting dressed and all that goes with it.

“Although I am not in the habit of quoting myself, I laid some of this out in a recent Times story noting that even though these days I am essentially going nowhere, I cannot set off without having first performed the rituals of grooming. I mentioned that showering and shaving and moisturising (Lab Series Maxcellence) and spritzing (Terre d’Hermes Eau Intense Vetiver) for me are threshold acts.

“While at work, I want to wear what I think of as real clothes. In the days when we all went to the office, this was typically an L.B.M. 1911 blazer over a button-down Oxford shirt and a pair of jeans. Now, donning a blazer to sit in a chair wearing headphones for daily video stand-ups would leave me feeling as though I had entered some ‘realness’ category at a vogueing ball. 

“All the same, I want to put something on that I can later remove to signal quitting time. The chore jacket is that garment. Most days I wear one in dark indigo from the Quaker Marine Supply Co (a 1949 nautical label recently reimagined by a member of the J McLaughlin preppy-wear dynasty) or one of the classics in moleskin or corduroy from Le Mont St Michel, a French label credited with creating this ‘vetement de travail’ in 1913. 

“I still wear a button-down Oxford and jeans. Although I have long had a serious shoe problem (a minimum of a dozen pairs of penny loafers, from Prada and Tod’s to my favourite oxblood pair from E.MARINELLA), these WFH days I forgo footwear because, why not? 

“I have a small amount of tech equipment in my apartment to help me function in the digital ether, mostly the Instagram Lives that I have really come to enjoy. I’m working on getting the Times social media team to provide me with a proper ring light. Meanwhile, I rely on a Glamcor tripod and light wands to help keep me from resembling the ‘before’ in a before-and-after picture or some barfly in the Mos Eisley cantina.”