Lebanon embraces sweatpants during the outbreak

THE ODDITIES begin the moment you step outside in Lebanon, now in its fourth week of near-total lockdown. Streets once choked with traffic are empty. At the entrance to a supermarket shoppers don masks and plastic gloves, while staff check their temperatures. But the strangest sight is inside. Customers stroll the aisles in sweatpants, pyjamas, even flip-flops. Asked about this unusually dégagé fashion, one shopper observed, with mock horror, that the Lebanese were starting to dress like Americans. Her tracksuit top, coincidentally, had the stars and stripes sewn on one arm, a relic of more casual days studying in America.

Depending on whom you ask, Lebanon’s 4m citizens are stereotyped as either stylish or vain, bon vivants or parvenus. It is a stereotype, they admit, rooted in some truth. A quick trip to the bakery might require a dab of make-up or a splash of cologne. Banks used to offer loans for plastic surgery. Cars, clothes, champagne in clubs—public life was a stage on which to show off.

Until the curtain fell. Nightclubs were first to close, then bars and restaurants. Even the Sunday lunch, a regular gathering of family and friends, has been curtailed: a government decree issued on April 5th limited car travel six days a week and forbade it...