The Year I Decided To Dress As Myself

I am a shameless lover of New Year’s resolutions. I understand all the arguments against them. They’re cheesy, people don’t stick to them, and you have to make changes to your own timeline. Nothing special about new year.

I also don’t agree with all the arguments against them. First of all, making changes that you want to make even for a few months is awesome. This is not a contract that you sign to change throughout the year. And second, people who hate New Year’s resolutions are overlooking one simple thing: You can choose something fun. You don’t have to make a resolution to eat healthier or run a half marathon or clean one room of your house every month. A friend introduced this concept to me years ago. (His for the year is eating cake more often and trying more butt foods.)

I love the idea of ​​changing myself for the new year. Rebirth, or growth, or simply a reminder that we are not static and we don’t have to be. That there may be new practices in our lives that bring joy or, yes, if we must, lower LDL cholesterol levels. I like to be reminded that who I am and what I do is undefined, unlocked. It’s not just that I can make goals around unpleasant things like work. I can also create goals for fun. In 2018, my goals were to make homemade paste and do skin care, and I did both! I feel too accomplished!

In this spirit, last year I decided that I needed to dress better. Not nicer but more fun, more fashionable, more I clothes. I have what is known medically as Too Much Clothing. I came up with this rather honestly. My mother and father both owned more clothes than a person could wear in four lifetimes. My father, who grew up very poor and overweight, had a very obsessive relationship with clothes. He has kept many of the few shirts he owned as a child, and can still describe how he felt buying each one; as an overweight child with few options, certain clothing items felt magical for him. They are a source of self-esteem. Once she lost weight and got a job at a department store, selling clothes, her romance really took off. When my parents eloped to Italy, where his father was born, he spent at least half of their honeymoon shopping. He used to choose clothes for my mother. She subscribes to women’s magazines to this day just for the sake of seeing good clothes. She has clothes that no longer fit or that she won’t wear anymore that she can’t get out of for sentimental reasons. Growing up, she had wardrobes in the three different bedrooms of the house and dressers in many more. Her clothes were everywhere, spilled over the chair, wrapped lovingly in the dry-cleaning plastic they brought home 20 years ago, laying flat to dry.

He passed the disease on to me. Clothing is my hobby. That matters to me in a way that might make you laugh if you’ve ever seen me run into CVS. This is problematic for several reasons: one, it’s expensive to buy new clothes, and two, it’s terrible for the world. These two things make me often feel guilty. I don’t spend much on any clothes, the most expensive thing I own by far is a $150 winter coat, but I used to buy it often. Any extra money I use to buy clothes. The problem is when you love and crave new clothes but you don’t have much money, you end up buying fast fashion, which is destroying our planet.

I realized over the years that I needed to stop. I would stop buying clothes for a few months only to relapse from boredom after 10 p.m. Finding clothes that make me feel good about myself feels so amazing, so magical. Really worth my money. (It’s funny to look back at photos and realize that clothes didn’t look as good as I thought they would.) Eventually, I accepted that clothes were something I loved, something I cared about and it was unlikely that I would stop buying new things. at a time. So I made a deal with myself that I could buy all the used clothes I wanted, and I could buy new things for special occasions. I supplement this with a clothing rental subscription to give me the pleasure of new clothing without much new production and consumption.

The plan wasn’t perfect, but it worked for the most part. Except it doesn’t reduce the amount of clothes I have. Where are the clothes I’m wearing? I work from home for the most part, my big outing of the day is walking to the coffee shop and walking back. The pandemic has only made it clear how little wear and tear I get on the things I’ve spent so much time and money shopping for, organizing, and washing. And out of this self-frustration came last year’s resolution: wear fun and fashionable clothes every day.

There’s no reason you can’t dress up to go to the coffee shop or the grocery store or your living room. Nothing will stop you and make you answer for your clothes. Looking stupid is fine! In fact, I pushed it!

So I started getting dressed. Oftentimes, I pick out an outfit I haven’t worn in a while (or had) that I want to keep but don’t wear, and then I challenge myself to make an outfit with it. If I can’t, that’s a great sign I need to donate it. It took me a bit longer to get ready, but I also really enjoyed myself. And I enjoy my clothes. Occasionally, I make stupid missteps like walking a mile in never-worn patent-leather oxfords, which burn me badly. Occasionally, I find (or rediscover) that sweaters feel scratchy or pants are too tight around the waist to be uncomfortable. Sometimes I end up hating my entire outfit, even though I love parts of it. But for the most part, it was an exercise in being bolder, not worrying about whether anyone other than me might like him.

It all paid off when after a few weeks, the barista at my coffee shop, a very stylish guy, asked if I worked in fashion. I climbed that high for weeks. What I mean is! What are the results. A little later, I got face-to-face work with very well-dressed co-workers and customers, and the whole project fell apart. I try to dress nice for work, but I always feel like I’m dressing for the people, and the job involves a lot of standing and carrying things and bending over and cleaning up messes; the requirement for work clothes wears me out. I stopped having fun with clothes.

Recently, I left that job and started working from home again. And I’m back. I try on new clothes and looks. I just put on a baseball cap after years of yearning to look good. I saw a beautiful woman wearing it on the streets of New York. I’ve loosened up my resolution a bit. I’m not going to lie, wearing An Outfit every day is a bit much, but I’m back to that too. Because it’s fun! Because you can have fun with personal changes. You don’t have to subject your body or mind to hell or work harder. The challenge is to have fun.