T.His longest waiting list of the season isn’t a Birkin bag, a Dyson fan, or an iPhone 14. So it’s no surprise that the fashion industry encourages us to start dressing like that.

A crisp single-button lab coat with sharp lapels opened the summer catwalk at Balmain in Courrèges and was also a key look for the late designer Issey Miyake. Designed to protect your eyes from splashes and flying tartar, these neon perspex goggles bear a striking resemblance to the oversized acetate sunglasses from Versace and Kanye West’s Yeezy Gap collaboration. Even the white Dansko clogs of choice for NHS footwear compete with a new line of industry-approved polyurethane “Super Birki” Birkenstock clogs that regularly sell out among non-NHS workers.

But it was the dental term “flossing” that planted the seed. As these things often appear on TikTok, they refer to precariously binding dresses, bathing suits, and trousers together with superfine straps, or “floss.” Its look has become a trademark of emerging designers such as Nensi Djoka and Supriya Lele. Worn by actors Julia Fox, Zendaya, and half the cast of Love Island.

There are sites that evaluate the “look of teeth”. According to Nurses.org, Figs is the top brand of scrubs, and YouTube offers hundreds of “scrub reviews” tutorials. Although figs and actual sales from the more expensive Italian brand Pasteli are not available, the white scrub continues to be Pasteli’s top seller.

The fashion industry enjoys renting uniforms and selling them back to us, often at a profit. Over the past five years, fashion shows and high streets have given us great outdoors (as we’ve come to know as hiking wear and gopcore), great indoors (think tech bros in expensive gray hoodies), Or simply urged me to dress with a door. – In 2017, New York Magazine argued that everyone wants to be like an architect, and the British high streets followed suit.

But with the UK in the middle of the NHS ‘dental desert’, is this trend just an example of rarity, dressing for treatment rather than for the job you want?

Anjli Patel, a Derbyshire-based orthodontist and spokesperson for the British Orthodontic Society, pointed to a dentist colleague who posted about ‘Jordan’ and said, ‘I’m not at all surprised, it’s been posted on social media. has helped spread this,” he said. on Instagram.

“But it really [casualisation] of the industry. What I wear to work has changed a lot. As with all workplaces, uniforms have been abandoned and comforts introduced. Patel sees a lot of Crocs.

Patel mentions trousers that look like loungewear, like those found at Arket, but with cuffed hems and “trucky b scrubs” from uniform suppliers such as Cherokee. For sunglasses, Euronda is the professional’s choice, though they are very similar to the glasses worn by musician Steve Lacy.

However, there are guidelines. “Whatever dentists wear to practice, they don’t wear it in public because the main concern is cross-infection,” says Anshu Sood, an expert orthodontist. “The clothes should be washable and the sleeves should be a little short so they don’t drag on the patient, but otherwise very relaxed.”

As with most quirky trends, the key lies in the styling. If you wear it head-to-toe, you risk looking Halloween-adjacent. No one knows you’re wearing it. The white coat, in particular, “is about wearing your own clothes underneath and being a different person just by putting it on,” he adds. “Hey, like Superman.

“Before the pandemic, and certainly before the so-called pandemic [current dental] In times of crisis, people took dental care for granted, avoided it, or put it off,” says Sood. “The NHS has told us that uniforms affect clinical confidence, especially given their reputation,” she says. “Based on that, I started looking for parts.

“I think people appreciate our value now.”