When the weather turned cold in December, Cindy Luo started wearing her fluffy pajamas over a hoodie to the office. Wearing comfortable sleep clothes to work became a habit, and soon she didn’t bother wearing matching tops and pants, opting for whatever was most comfortable.
A few months later, she posted photos of herself in a thread about “rough clothes at work” that had gone viral on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese app similar to Instagram. She was one of tens of thousands of young workers in China who proudly posted photos of themselves showing up to the office in dresses, sweatshirts and sandals with socks. The just-out-of-bed look was shockingly relaxed for most Chinese workplaces.
“I just want to wear what I want,” said Ms. Luo, 30, an interior designer in Wuhan, a city in Hubei province. “I just don’t think it’s worth spending money to dress up for work since I’m just sitting there.”
Defying expectations of proper work attire reflects the growing distaste among China’s youth for a life of ambition and effort that has marked the past few decades. As the country’s growth slows and promising opportunities recede, many young people choose instead to “lie down,” a countercultural approach to seeking an easy and simple life. And now even those with steady jobs are quietly protesting.
Intentionally skimpy outfits became a movement on social media when a user named “Kendou S-” posted a video last month on Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister service. She showed off her work outfit: a fluffy brown sweater dress over plaid pajama pants with a pink, light quilted jacket and fur slippers.
In the video, she said her supervisor at work told her several times that her clothes were “rough” and that she should wear better clothes “to remember the image of the company.”
The video took off. received more than 735,000 likes and was shared 1.4 million times. The hashtag “grubby clothes at work” spread across several Chinese social media platforms and sparked a competition of whose work dress was the most hideous. On Weibo, the Chinese version of X, the topic generated hundreds of millions of views and sparked a wider debate about why young people are reluctant to dress up for work these days.
“It’s the progress of the times,” said Xiao Xueping, a psychologist in Beijing. He said young people grew up in a relatively more inclusive environment than previous generations and learned to put their own feelings first.
Mr Xiao said the clothes can be a form of responsible protest because people are still doing their jobs. It is also a sign of how countries reassess values and priorities as they reach higher levels of prosperity.
The People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, criticized young people for “lying on the level” in a 2022 article, urging them to keep working hard. Since then, he has echoed the advice of Xi Jinping, China’s leader, who urged young people to “eat bitterness”, a colloquial expression meaning to endure hardship.
But the People’s Daily refrained from reprimanding young Chinese for what it called “ugliness” at work. The publication said the trend was a form of self-deprecation and that it was “necessary to magnify it into a principle problem” as long as workers dressed appropriately and had a good work attitude.
Working from home during the pandemic has changed workplace dynamics around the world. In the United States, many companies have faced resistance to a push back to the office, and the five-day-a-week commute is no longer a given in many companies. After three years of living under China’s strict Covid restrictions, Chinese employees don’t mind going to the office — but many want to do it on their terms and in their comfortable clothes.
Most of the responses to the “gross clothes at work” posts came from women. In China, like many places around the world, women have higher standards for office wear, while men’s clothing often requires less thought. For the almost entirely male top officials of the Chinese Communist Party, the choice of what to wear is quite simple — “ting ju feng,” or “office and office style.” He is the soft-spoken and understated look of a typical mid-level bureaucrat, a style favored by Mr. Xi.
A colleague of Joeanna Chen, a 32-year-old translator at a Hangzhou beauty clinic, posted photos of her wardrobe on social media with the caption: “Guess how long it will take the boss to talk to her?” (Ms. Chen’s colleague had her permission to post the photos.)
Mrs. Chen wore a yellow coat with a hood and a white knitted hat that covered her ears. On her arms were mismatched blue and beige sleeve covers adorned with cows. She wore black pants and pink-and-blue checkered socks with granny-style fur loafers.
Ms. Chen said she recognized that the outfit, her usual office attire, was not very stylish, but she didn’t care because it was comfortable. The sleeves were made by her grandmother. The sweater was her mother’s and the hat once belonged to her son.
She said her boss once asked her to wear something sexier to work, but she had ignored his request. In addition, for the first time, he has started turning down work assignments he doesn’t want to do.
After years of unpredictable lockdowns, quarantines and fears of falling ill during the pandemic, Ms Chen said all she wanted now was to live in the moment with a stable job and a peaceful life. He doesn’t worry about promotions or getting ahead.
“Be happy every day and don’t force things on yourself,” she said.
For Jessica Jiang, 36, who works in e-commerce sales at a clothing company in Shanghai, her “gross” appearance is more about her messy hair and lack of makeup.
Ms. Jiang said she did not have enough time in the morning to get ready because of her hourly commute. He said he got dressed by throwing clothes at random. On a recent day, the result was a sweater that was too short to cover her thermal underwear. “Everyone is focused on their work – no one cares about the dress,” Ms Jiang said. “It’s good enough to get the job done.”
But Lulu Mei, 30, a bank employee in the eastern city of Wuhu, said she had to wear a uniform every day: a blue blazer, matching pants and a light-colored button-down shirt. She said that without the requirement, she might eventually stop dressing up because “all jobs are boring.”
Ms. Luo, the interior designer who wears her fluffy pajamas to work, said there were days when she dressed more conventionally – like when she went out with friends after work or when her pajamas were in the laundry. She loves fashion, she said. At work, she listens to the runway music from the latest Chanel show from Paris Fashion Week.
When she joined her company three years ago, she wore coats to look more mature and prepared her outfits the night before. In time, he grew tired of it and began to question the practice.
“I feel like I don’t know what I’m dressing for,” Ms. Luo said. “I just want to live a little more in my own way.”
