Tales of Thrift: On Wednesdays We Wear Whatever (pt. 1)

Editor’s note: hi, it’s me, I’m the editor. I’m adding this as a kind of introduction slash context for this new series, Tales of Thrift. The content of this series is adapted from the Memoir That Never Was, which I wrote last year. Its themes centered on identity-making and my relationship with secondhand stuff, but in writing it, I ended up synthesizing ideas that have been pivotal to my growth as a person since turning 40. Although I ultimately shelved my Memoir That Never Was indefinitely, I’ve decided that there are parts I would like to share here on the blog. It will get pretty personal/vulnerable at times, but I think the community we’ve created here is a wonderful (and safe) space, and I hope that these posts will inspire reflection and conversation. Cheers!

Have you ever looked at your overflowing closet and thought, “God, I have nothing to wear!” as you scrambled to pick something to wear to the job, appointment, or party you’re already 10 minutes late for? Isn’t that the worst? Nothing is more guaranteed to kill a good mood faster, or make you want to crawl back into bed and tell the world, “sorry, better luck tomorrow.” Or is that just me? Because I’ve been there, and sometimes it wasn’t just an ‘off’ day. Sometimes it was, like, an entire month. When that happens, I know it’s time for a check-in: something is rotten in the state of Denmark Adina, and I must find out what it is. Clothes are just clothes, except sometimes they aren’t.

Wait. Let me rephrase that. For some people, clothes are just clothes. Period. End of chapter. Just kidding – let’s continue. Since the invention of the loincloth, clothes have provided functional utility and, since we moved out of caves, social utility too. We wear clothes because they protect our bodies from the environment and because they tell other people who we are and what we’re doing. An office worker and a farmer wear different things for both of those reasons. And those reasons represent the sum total of what clothes do and mean for some people. Let’s call those people Functional Clothes Wearers. Think of Steve Jobs, the man who single-handedly spawned the “successful people wear uniforms” think-piece cottage industry. He famously wore the same thing every day, a black turtleneck and jeans. Maybe he did it because, as some people suggested, he wanted to create a personal brand that set him apart from other CEOs. Maybe he did it for the same reason Barack Obama told people he only wore gray or blue suits – to pare down decisions, eliminating the trivial (what to eat, what to wear) in order to focus on the critical (running a global empire, presumably). Either way, for Functional Clothes Wearers, function trumps form; to them, the fashion industry occupies the same mental space as the car industry does for me – I know it’s there but I never think about it until it’s time to buy a new car, at which point I pick whatever car-shaped object fits my driving needs and budget. Steve Jobs wore turtlenecks made by Issey Miyake rather than Walmart – I would too, if I had the money – but I don’t think he was a front-row regular at any fashion shows.

There is a second group of people, whom I am going to call Creative Clothes Wearers. I am not using the term “creative” as a descriptor of their style, but rather as a way to describe the way in which they relate to clothes. For this group, wearing clothes is a creative act – a means of self-expression, like writing or painting. Function matters, of course, but function can be served in different ways, and it is the choice of form that is important to Creative Clothes Wearers. For these folks, picking a suit is not a trivial decision to be automated in service of greater efficiency. It is an opportunity to communicate – not as a matter of necessity or convenience, but as art. For Creative Clothes Wearers, an outfit isn’t the email you write to your boss about the quaterly sales report; it’s the novel you write so the world can understand your point of view.

Functional Clothes Wearers and Creative Clothes Wearers are fundamentally different. Not better or worse, just different. Everyone falls somewhere along the spectrum between Functional Clothes Wearers and Creative Clothes Wearers. It doesn’t matter where you fall, but I think it’s helpful to know where you fall, because that determines how you can best maximize your happiness when it comes to fashion and clothes. If you’re closer to the Functional Clothes Wearer end of the spectrum, having to constantly pay attention to fashion trends, updating your closet every season, or even just thinking about personal style can feel bewildering, overwhelming and, ultimately, frustrating. It’s like being asked to write an essay on philosophy, when all you want to do is send a quick text message to your husband about picking up some milk on the way home. Functional Clothes Wearers want to look nice and feel good in their clothes as much as everyone else, but there is no particular joy in thinking about clothing a second longer than necessary to decide if something looks cute, feels comfortable, suits the climate and their boss’ expectations. If that sounds like you, here’s my unsolicited advice. You don’t need to pick three words to describe your style, hell, you don’t need to have a personal style. You can just wear clothes. Any clothes that you like, find comfortable, and consider appropriate to your situation. That’s it. Nobody is going to think less of you if you’re wearing a pair of jeans from 3 trend cycles ago, because people in general don’t think that much about what other people are wearing and also because most of them have no idea what a trend cycle is. You wanna know what I say when I see someone who is wearing skinny jeans in the year of our Lord 2025? Nothing. What someone else is wearing is none of my goddamn business as it has absolutely zero impact on my life. You wanna know what I – a self-professed Creative Clothes Wearer who spends an inordinate amount of time pondering the meaning of clothes – think when I see someone wearing skinny jeans? Assuming I have even noticed it – because, like most people, I’m probably otherwise occupied ruminating about what I’m wearing or, better yet, about what I’m having for lunch – this is what I think: here is a person who either really loves skinny jeans or doesn’t think about jeans very much at all. As is their prerogative.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of a value-neutral statement. Do you know why I’m wasting time pointing out something obvious like that? It’s not that I don’t trust your reading comprehension; I just feel that this is a point worth belaboring. There are some absolutes in life, but mostly there are choices that exist outside of an objective binary – good and bad. What makes a choice good or bad is a subjective valuation each of us brings to the question and, short of a situation where that choice directly impacts another person, the answers can never be categorically wrong. I think avocadoes are gross, but I don’t think it’s gross that my husband loves them. His love of avocadoes does not threaten my personal worldview; I don’t need to convince him that I’m right, that avocadoes are gross and that he should buy muscat grapes instead. (Although he should, because I adore them, and he should also let me eat all of them.) I’m using a dumb example here, but go into any comment section on any social media platform, and you will see a million of them.

“Cute dress! I would never wear that though – it’s so short.”

 “That paint colour makes the room look really dark – it would look so much better beige.”

“You’re putting up your Christmas tree in October? Wow, that’s so early!”

“You’re putting up your Christmas tree in December? My kids would never let me do that …”

The only rational and relatively polite response in each and every one of those cases is “OK, and?” Most social media comment sections are a waste of time because they’re taken up by people dumping out their insecurities, stream-of-consciousness style, in the pursuit of validation they will never get because why would anyone stop what they’re doing and go “wow, Random Person I’ve Never Met, you are SO right: my house should have been beige all along, what was I even thinking – of course there is only one right way to decorate and you nailed it!” To avoid inadvertently becoming one of those people, I have a very simple rule I use in deciding whether or not to post a comment on someone else’s social media content. It goes like this: am I writing an unqualified compliment? Hit send. Am I writing anything else? No, I am not. That’s it. I told you it was simple. I know what you might be thinking: some people post stuff asking for opinions – surely, then, it’s acceptable to give one. And I am not going to disagree with you, but I will gently point out that unless it’s a question posed in a friends group chat, it’s probably just a ploy to hit engagement metrics. Personally, I ain’t got time for that, but you do you.

But let’s hop off this tangent and return to fashion. You might think that because I’m a person who views clothing as a form of self-expression, I am constantly trying to “read” what other people are saying with their outfits. I do … and I don’t. In depends on the person. It’s quite easy to spot someone who is trying to express something through their clothing versus someone who is simply wearing clothes. Even Functional Clothes Wearers can recognize it, though they may not always be able to put their finger on why. It’s what we are referring to when we say that a person has “style”. Personal style is like a signal that says “subtext here, read at your own leisure”. You may or may not have the time and inclination to do it. But the invitation is there. On the other hand, if there is no subtext – if someone is just wearing clothes and going about their day – there is nothing to ponder. Sometimes clothes are just clothes.

This is a good time to bring up an important distinction. Style isn’t the same thing as an iconic look. Marilyn Monroe and Steve Jobs both had iconic looks, a visual identity that was instantly recognizable and never changing. As Philip Mann writes of Hollywood stars, “the secret is to project an innate personality through an identifiable style and to stick to it for evermore.”[2] As with any archetypes, there is only so much you can parse in an iconic look. It is, inherently, a finite and supra-personal text. Iconic looks represent an act of invention, not an act of expression. Personal style is the opposite. It is rarely static, because people are not static; what they have to say, and how they want to say it, changes as they change. I am not necessarily talking about radical transformations, although they can happen– sometimes, punks do grow up to become middle-managers – but the small, sometimes infinitesimal shifts that shape the course of our lives.

To be continued … [next week]

[1] But since we’re on the topic, my opinion is that anyone who makes a snide comment about another person’s clothes is an asshole with an inferiority complex. I was that asshole once, and therapy-ing the shit out of my inferiority complex magically cured me of the inability to mind my own business.

[2] Philip Mann, The Dandy At Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century, 2017, p. 221