There are many brilliant things about working from home – 24-hour access to the fridge, the non-existent commute, deliverance from office politics and pointless meetings. One of the best, though, is the freedom to wear whatever the hell you like, with no one around to judge you for it.

I recently swapped my job as a newspaper feature writer for the less ‘structured’ life of a freelance journalist. Although I made an initial stab at respectability - washing my hair, applying mascara and putting on a clean(ish) pair of fitted jeans – it didn’t take long for standards to slip.

Within days, mascara was abandoned and lunchtimes were being spent searching for ‘loungewear’ on Asos. In week two, I adopted a uniform of baggy jeans and a grey t-shirt. By week three, I’d landed on my current ‘look’: tracksuit bottoms, grey jumper, grey hoodie.

Since I’ve not washed my hair for three days, it’s scraped into a high ponytail. Neither jumper has seen the inside of a washing machine for some time. My boyfriend has nicknamed me ‘Heft’, after the Liz Moore novel about a man who never leaves his house, nor washes his clothes.

Does this matter? From my living room window, I glimpse besuited workers heading to their ‘proper jobs’ and feel a pang of guilt about my Waynetta-like existence. Do I have no self-respect? But then, what on earth are ‘work clothes’ when you work from home?

Presumably, I’m not alone in wondering this.  This month, the ONS reported that 4.2 million Brits are based outside the office. At nearly 14% of the workforce, that’s the highest level since they started counting, in 1998. The number of businesses set up from home, meanwhile, jumped 34% between 2012 and 2013, according to a survey by Freelancer.co.uk. And in 2011, the CBI reported that 59% of companies offered employees the option of working from home.

"I get up and put on a tennis skirt straightaway as I like to play tennis daily. Then I come back and I'm afraid to admit I don't take it off" - Rachel Johnson, author

In opting for a more ‘relaxed’ aesthetic, I’m in fine company. Journalist and author Rachel Johnson says she “takes the absence of ‘career wear’ to the next level”:

‘I get up and put on a tennis skirt straightaway as I like to play tennis daily. Then I come back and I'm afraid to admit I don't take it off. In the winter I sometimes wear the same slob wear - tracksuit bottoms and thermals - all day and all night.’

"I have this one fleece that I've worn every winter for my whole decade of homeworking, which probably ought to be taken out and shot" - Janice Turner, columnist

Columnist and interviewer Janice Turner says she largely dresses ‘like a perpetual student’, citing ‘comfort and warmth’ as her watchwords putting on jeans and Uggs to work from her shed-cum-office: ‘Over the years, my standards have got worse, I guess because no one sees me all day.’

Does she care about looking stylish?

‘HAHA! No. I don't want to look actually repulsive. But I do have this one fleece that I've worn every winter for my whole decade of homeworking, which probably ought to be taken out and shot.’

Still, she does make some effort. She won’t work in pyjamas because ‘that feels too slobby.’ If she’s feeling low, she puts on make up to boost her morale.

In doing so, she might be on to something.

‘Research suggests that we can take on the attributes we associate with clothes,’ says Professor Karen Pine, author of Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of Fashion. ‘If you’re sitting around in your PJs – which you associate with resting and slobbing around in - your thoughts might match that.’

She’s discovered that wearing a Superman t-shirt enhances students’ confidence, and that women dressed in bathing suits perform worse at maths than those in a sweater.

American researchers, meanwhile, have found that wearing a lab coat improves concentration. When participants believe the coat belongs to a doctor, the effect is stronger than when they think it’s a painter’s.

Which may explain Kathy Lette’s rather wonderful choice of work wear. Writing her forthcoming book, she took to wearing the black academic hat given to her by Solent Southampton University when she received her Honorary Doctorate.

‘I guess I look pretty ridiculous sitting in front of my computer screen in exercise gear and an academic doctoral hat,’ she says. ‘But it made my brain look bigger - I couldn’t have completed the book without it.’

Maybe, then, the key to ‘working-from-home chic’ (ha) is less a matter of looking, well, chic – or even respectable – so much as finding clothes you associate with getting things done. If that means donning a doctoral hat, or saving time on laundry by pulling on the same sweatshirt day after day, what of it?

And at least we’re actually wearing clothes – far from a universal habit, as it turns out. Victor Hugo, John Cleever, Ernest Hemingway and Benjamin Franklyn are some of the prolific writers who, it’s said, worked in the nude, or semi-nude.

 Something to aspire to, perhaps.

Follow me @aliceazania