I Have Nothing To Wear!
On Materialism & (Pseudo) Self-Discovery in Fashion
As early as elementary school, I recall reciting the “I don’t have anything to wear” mantra to a closet full of clothes every night as I picked out my outfit for school the next day. The irony, of course, is that I had - and currently have - plenty to wear, and have somehow always managed to cobble together a palatable ensemble out of the bits and bobs in my dresser drawer (at least palatable for the time being).
As a grade-schooler, I dressed as painfully on-trend as possible, looking to Hannah Montana and Alex Russo as my style inspirations. There are countless photos of me sporting toothless grins along with checkered headbands, infinity scarves, and bedazzled bootcut jeans under plaid skirts. I rocked graphic tees from Justice and plastic jewelry from Claire’s. At times, I would switch around my shoes, wearing one of my pink Keds on my left foot and a purple Vans shoe on my right. In middle and high school, my tastes matured to Forever 21 and H&M. It was 2014, but I looked like a clumsy interpretation of the 90s: Doc Martens on my feet, flannel around my waist, and a Brandy Melville lace choker around my neck. Black skinny jeans with slits in the knees and a worn, thrifted T-shirt advertising a band I never heard of was the height of fashion.
Today, I’ve graduated to, well, I’m not sure exactly. If I had to label my style, I suppose I would call it “classic” which feels like a kinder way to say “basic.” I wear almost exclusively neutral colors: blacks, browns, greys, greens, and white. I go for cuts of clothes that are simple and flattering, but not overly so - I like to avoid drawing too much attention to my body. Thrifted sweaters, good denim, and hand-me-down leather coats are some of my favorite items, along with some special occasion dresses, scuffed ballet flats, and vintage cowboy boots that blister my heels. But most days, I look somewhere between a walking Uniqlo and a walking Aritzia, minus all the blazers.
Lately, I’ve been having a sort of reckoning with the reality that how I appear on the outside doesn’t necessarily mirror how I am on the inside - or at least how I think I am. As a child, it felt easier to experiment with my appearance - I hadn’t yet had a grasp on how much the world could perceive me and could float in and out of different presentational choices with ease. As a teenager, I was reactionary to my previously unregimented, laissez-faire way of dressing - I styled the next day’s outfit every night before bed, taking care to never wear the same ensemble twice in a month. I never wore sweatpants to school and never donned a makeup-free face. I developed a kind of identifiable uniform - a thrifted T-shirt over a turtleneck, jeans, and neutral butterfly clips pulling the hair out of my face. It felt good having a stamp of sorts - I thought it told the world “This is me. This is a girl who knows who she is and knows how she wants the world to regard her.”
As my “young adult” identity continues to calcify, my sense of style seems to lag behind. I always manage to get dressed but rarely feel completely like myself in what I throw on. I’m either overdressed or underdressed, too masculine or too feminine, too modest or too revealing. Sometimes I’ll feel off-kilter on some spectrum that I can’t even identify - whatever it is, I just know it’s not quite right.
I know the partial answer to the age-old “closet full of clothes, nothing to wear” dilemma lies in the illusion of choice. We’re overwhelmed by the number of options of things to wear at our disposal, a number that’s only increasing as fast fashion and micro-trends accelerate. In addition, stepping into a new phase of life - like adulthood - often forces one to consider or reconsider their identity, as it’s literally changing before their eyes, punctuated by transitions out of school and into the paid workforce. Not only is it challenging to figure out how to dress for a new job, but it’s also quite difficult to discern how life changes are altering the fabric of your personality and values, and how you want such changes to be reflected in your appearance or not. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re constantly making tiny shifts - edits, adjustments - until before we know it, we’re quite different from who we were five years ago.
As I stake my flag more firmly into my “adult” identity, I find myself containing an increasing number of contradictions. For one, I feel objectively more comfortable in my skin than I was as a teenager. As an adolescent, I didn’t dare cross the threshold of my family home without a face plastered with products. I flat ironed my hair daily to a crisp and packed concealer on my blemishes on days in, just in case a boy Snapchatted me. I regularly tore myself down on the basis of appearance, thinking it would motivate me to brainstorm ways to make myself more conventionally attractive.
Today, through deliberate self-work and good old pre-frontal cortex development, I’ve learned to start placing less weight in my appearance bucket. I can walk through town - zits exposed - and know that how I look is one of the less interesting things about me. I think about my appearance far less than I did as a child, which I consider to be a personal win, as my brain is free to think about more pressing and fascinating matters. Nonetheless, the flip side to not regarding your appearance much is, well, not regarding your appearance. It often means falling back upon the default style of the moment, which can make one feel painfully ordinary. It’s swimming in a sea of direct-to-consumer garments that have the personality of Saltine crackers. It means being one of many, which I am, of course. Saying it aloud just makes me feel extraordinarily unspecial. And as much as I hate to admit it, I guess I care about feeling special.
I find it unhelpful to develop a sense of self that’s heavily reliant on material manifestations of it. This idea reminds me of the concept of “spiritual materialism” popularized by the prominent and controversial Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa. Spiritual materialism alludes to the way people use spirituality to boost their egos, or rational senses of self, rather than transcend them. People attempt to achieve contentment through worldly, material pursuits. We attempt to form solid senses of self by accumulating clothes, relationships, and a career that speaks to who we are at our core. Spirituality is similarly co-opted for this self-serving end - we meditate, for instance, so we can achieve a specific emotional state, claiming self-righteousness because of our ability to escape our day-to-day life and then return to it more refreshed. Since these are often material pursuits with temporary ends, suffering ensues. If who we are is what we have and what we do, then who are we when we don’t have or do those things?
On social media, online circles often similarly foster an obsession with the material, encouraging users to cement a unique "aesthetic," that's as individual as it is culturally palatable. Such aesthetics often involve a great deal of consumption to materialize, equating "finding oneself" with gross expenditure. If you’re feeling not quite right, you probably just need to embellish yourself correctly and you’ll be good as new. Such a solution can likewise leave internet users wanting as it’s a momentary scratch for an increasingly painstaking itch.
Living in the modern, online world makes it tricky to live in either vacuum: an environment that’s free of material desires or a realm in which accruing physical items that correspond with a particular vibe salves any self-ailment. We can’t divorce ourselves from the reality that material items hold both personal sentiment and cultural capital in our society. Or the actuality that how the outside world perceives us affects the opportunities we’re given, affecting how we view ourselves in turn. As with many personal and cultural afflictions, we often find ourselves straddling the line between playing the game and trying to shift the overarching ideology. Searching for a signature sense of style can be an important part of self-determination - there’s something undeniably superb about putting on an outfit and feeling good about what you see in the mirror, satisfied with how you’re presenting yourself to the world. Likewise, materials are fleeting - trends rotate at an ever-quickening pace and there comes a time when we have to step out of our digs and feel that same contentment with what’s underneath.
I hope to tread forward with a mentality that comes close to this understanding, seeking out appearance choices that feel like me, while knowing that who I am is much more than what drapes and adorns my skin, finding some peace amid the cognitive dissonance. With such an understanding, maybe I’ll somehow have “more” to wear in my closet than I did previously. Oh, once again, the irony.
I needed to read this as a great reminder that there is so much to who we are then the exterior or what is on our resume .
let’s be honest, I still get style inspiration from Alex Russo. Best-dressed Disney character hands down.