The Myth of Model Off Duty Dressing - from a models perspective.
Let me tell you something that nobody in fashion wants to admit: models look absolutely terrible most of the time.
I've been modelling for three years now – full time in London, with three month stints in Tokyo and Seoul. Different cities, different agencies, wildly different cultures. But one thing that has remained entirely consistent across all of them is that on any given working day, the models look genuinely rough.
Mismatched tracksuits that haven't been washed in three days because the call times don't leave room for laundry. Stains that multiply day by day, and trainers that have seen better years, not just days. The aesthetic could most generously be described as somewhere between off-duty and off-grid.
And yet somehow, this became aspirational. The myth was born here, I think. In the gap between what the job actually looks like (long days, eye bags, dehydration) and what ends up on the internet.
Because there was a time when model off-duty dressing was genuinely effortless. Not a look, not a trend – just what happened when someone whose entire working life revolved around clothes stopped thinking about clothes for five minutes. It wasn't curated. It wasn't calculated. It just was. And that ease, that complete indifference, is what made it worth copying in the first place.
But then the internet found it. Packaged it. Sold it back to us at £400 a pair of intentionally beaten-up trainers. And the moment effortlessness became something you could buy, it stopped being effortless.
Now it requires an enormous amount of work to look like you're doing none at all. The perfectly imperfect undone hair. The intentionally oversized jacket. The carefully constructed illusion of not caring – which is the myth in its purest form. Effortlessness, packaged and sold back to you.
even these icons probably thought about these outfits!
It's become deeply uncool to visibly try. And yet trying has never been more elaborate or more expensive.
To give a real world modelling case study:
I went to a wellness event last week, an evening run hosted by BKM Fitness through my agency. We started at the new TRAMP wellness members club in Mayfair with some breathing exercises, a surprisingly compelling talk on the benefits of nasal breathing, and then a 3.5km run around Hyde Park, stopping every now and then for Swedish military exercises that can only be described as all forms of torture.
This was followed by protein shakes, collecting some well-earned freebies, and pouring water on my face because I was so red.
Me and a friend had shown up in the bummiest skinny leggings we own, borrowed trainers, and not a running accessory between us. Which felt correct, because we were actually there to run.
Others, however, arrived in coordinated sets and, no joke, Tom Ford sunglasses. For an evening run around Hyde Park. And then there were the ones who didn't come to run at all. Pitched up after the fact, grabbed a goodie bag, took some content, and left.
Which tells you everything you need to know about who the dressing up was actually for.
Even in spaces that have nothing to do with fashion, the performance follows. That's how deep it goes now. The myth has escaped the wardrobe entirely and infiltrated every aspect of lifestyle.
Real off-duty style – the kind that the original "model off duty" aesthetic was actually built on, was never about getting it right. It was about not thinking about it at all. You can't buy that. You can't Pinterest board your way into it. And you absolutely cannot pitch up to a sweaty 3.5km run around Hyde Park and manufacture it.
The myth isn't that models dress well off duty. The myth is that effortlessness still exists at all – and that any of us, models included, are immune to performing it.
And if you're still spending significant time trying to look like you're not trying?
You're trying far too hard.
With love,
Mimi x
IG: @itswithlovemimi
TIKTOK: @mimipiqua
PINTEREST: @mimipiqua
SUBSTACK: @mimipiqua - uploads twice per week
Comments