Circles.Life tries to sort out WFH bedlam with Emergency Wardrobe filters

As the COVID-19 pandemic has raged around the world, people have been struggling to get work done from home. While getting a viable workstation is one thing, the other challenge is to actually get work done without being distracted by children on spotty virtual classes, partners timing their smoothie-making just as you are about to deliver the definitive virtual pitch to your bosses or pets deciding they must wake the neighbourhood just as you’re logging on.

Nothing, however compares to appearing on a video call or presentation looking like you’ve forgotten to do your laundry. Or like you have simply forgotten you're wearing your pyjamas or that you're going au naturale. Or if the baby has thrown up their breakfast on your shirt just as a quarterly review call gets rolling. Singapore telco Circles.Life and The Secret Little Agency want to rescue you from just these emergencies and unexpected and apparent nudity.

The solution: a series of webcam filters that double as professional attire. Dubbed the "Emergency Wardrobe," they let users instantly get dressed for video calls with a click. Available as Snapchat’s Snap Camera filters on popular videoconferencing apps like Zoom and Google Hangouts, as well as Instagram filters on mobile devices, the Emergency Wardrobe, the firm says, will finally make pyjamas, rumpled sweats, and outright nakedness acceptable states of dress in the professional world.

With companies ranging from Google to Facebook and agency networks ranging from Dentsu Aegis Network to WPP all in various stages of sorting out prolonged WFH plans or staggered returns, this attempt at virtual modesty may be quite welcome. With platforms such as Google Meet also enabling noise cancelation, the organised chaos of WFH setups may soon be, sadly, a thing of the past.