Returning to the office means wearing fancy clothes again. Or at least nicer leggings.

Tami Wells Thomas is an attorney who also serves as a part-time magistrate judge in Newton County, which is about 40 miles outside of Atlanta. While her legal practice remains entirely virtual, she has been going into the courthouse to hear cases by video conference.

She dresses up for these occasions because she sees business attire as one of the guard rails of decorum. It encourages professionalism. It reflects a seriousness of purpose. It aligns everyone on the same page.

But at the moment, workwear is a kind of split-screen aesthetic in which people such as Thomas have eagerly returned to form . . . and others most definitely have not. Which is how Thomas came to face the video screen with the young man reclining in bed.

“I’m sitting in my chair in a [judicial] robe,” Thomas says. “He was in his bed. Like, chillin’.”

“He was a defendant,” Thomas recalls. “But it wasn’t a criminal matter, so I guess he didn’t care. But it’s still court.”

What did judge Thomas say to the aggressively comfortable gentleman who appeared to be in his late 20s? Nothing. But Thomas’s silence should not be mistaken for approval.

“The computer gives people, I think, a sense of comfort: We’re coming into your home, so I guess we should accept you as you are,” Thomas says. “But it negates the process.”

The future of workwear is not pajamas — of this Thomas is certain. Nor is it loungewear or sweats. It may be, in part, defined by leggings, but even then, the leggings are likely to mimic actual pants.

That’s what Lululemon says, and Lululemon knows everything there is to know about this country’s collective obsession with personal comfort.

“We feel that consumers will require comfort going forward, but will be looking for something that’s a little more dressed up,” says Sun Choe, chief product officer at Lululemon.

To wit: “We launched a pant called the City Sleek.”

They are not typical leggings, says Choe (pronounced SHAY). They are looser. They are cut in the style of a “five pocket-like jean, but constructed more comfortably.”

These five-pocket leggings will not leave the wearer with the illusion that she is naked, which is the aim of many of the brand’s classic offerings. One does not want to go back into the office and sit in a meeting with the boss feeling naked. Instead, the City Sleek pants will offer the sensation of being gently supported in one’s return to normalcy.

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