The debate on whether athleisure qualifies as “fashion”—or even “real clothing” at all—feels pretty silly these days, if not straight-up antiquated. We’ve moved on from asking if leggings are appropriate for an overnight flight to spending all of our waking hours in some version of stretchy pants. We even conduct our most important Zoom meetings in them, albeit safely out of frame. Unsurprisingly, loungewear is among the only apparel category seeing a rise in demand amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

There’s a reason we’ve never connected loungewear with “fashion” or considered it part of our actual style. For most of us pre-COVID, leggings and sweatpants were merely the soft clothes we changed into after work, the worn-out or baggy things we’d never dream of wearing in the “real world.” Now, of course, that liberating feeling of ripping off your suit and wrapping yourself in fleece isn’t even happening: Our entire day is spent in a comfy, cozy dream state. Understandably, it’s inspiring us to up our loungewear game—if not for the benefit of our colleagues on Zoom, then at least for our own productivity. It’s true that we work smarter and perform better when we feel “put together,” a concept that contradicts the very point of loungewear. But we’re finding there’s a difference between a stained gray hoodie and an outfit—yes, outfit—that’s both exceedingly comfortable and surprisingly elegant.