The Rectangle That Redefined Professionalism
In a fully physical office, professional identity is constructed through the entire body—posture, footwear, the drape of a jacket, the polish of a shoe. In a video call, it is compressed into a rectangle. What appears within that frame becomes professional. What falls below it becomes invisible. And what is invisible, increasingly, is pyjamas.
A 2025 Preply survey of 1,000 Singaporean workers found that 43% admit to wearing pyjamas or dressing only from the waist up during professional video calls. Gen Z leads this trend at 57%, compared to 47% of millennials. Gen X remains the most formal cohort, with 70% reporting they have never dressed down for a work-related call.
The Cultural Logic Behind the Waist-Up Wardrobe
This is not simple laziness. It is a rational response to a mediated professional environment. When 69% of Singaporeans use video calls for work, the visual grammar of professionalism has shifted. The blazer, once a full-body signal of authority, now functions as a 12-inch costume piece. Its power is theatrical, not functional.
The Singapore Business Federation recognised this early, advising in 2021 that employees should “dress for the occasion” even on video calls—acknowledging that only the top half of the body would be seen. But the advice missed a deeper truth: if only the top half matters, the bottom half becomes a space of personal freedom. The waist-up wardrobe is not a failure of professionalism. It is a negotiated settlement between the demands of the camera and the realities of domestic space.
The Camera-Off Escape Hatch
The Preply survey also revealed that 19% of respondents cite inappropriate attire as the reason for turning off their cameras, with those aged 25 to 34 being the most appearance-conscious at 24%. Additionally, 33% turn off cameras to attend to offscreen matters such as family or deliveries, and 25% for bathroom breaks.
The camera-off button has become a professional firewall. It allows workers to participate in meetings without being visually scrutinised, effectively decoupling presence from appearance. This is a significant departure from pre-pandemic office norms, where physical presence and visual presentation were inseparable.
What Employers Are Doing About It
Rather than enforcing dress codes that cannot be monitored across a distributed workforce, progressive Singapore employers are shifting to outcome-based professionalism. The question becomes: did the work get done well, and was the interaction respectful? This aligns with the broader SGBC philosophy that “professional image depends on our behaviour, work quality, and respect for others,” not on the presence of a tie.
Some companies are going further, formalising hybrid attire guidelines that distinguish between client-facing calls, internal meetings, and asynchronous work. These guidelines typically require collared shirts for external interactions but allow greater latitude for internal collaboration—acknowledging that the camera frame creates a different social contract than the office floor.
The Long-Term Trajectory
The waist-up phenomenon is unlikely to disappear as hybrid work becomes permanent. Its persistence suggests a deeper shift in how professionalism is defined: not by what one wears, but by how one performs. In this framing, the blazer on a video call is a courtesy, not a credential. It signals respect for the other participants, not submission to an institutional norm.
For Singapore’s workforce, this is both liberating and unsettling. It liberates workers from the physical and financial burden of full formalwear. It unsettles the traditional markers of professional status that older cohorts relied upon. The rectangle, it turns out, is not just a frame. It is a mirror reflecting how work itself has changed.
