Why do I buy new clothes? I don’t mean this as in, why do I pathologically do this terrible thing that is the most shameful thing a human could do. No, I don’t buy endless clothes, and certainly not particularly expensive ones, and they’re often enough used clothes, so as much as I might want to self-flagellate over the financial or ecological impact on this interest of mine, it is simply not enough to merit it.
But it also seems extremely silly for me to buy myself clothes at all, because of my lifestyle. I do two things: wrangle small children and work from home. I do not go out at night. Anything I’d mind getting stained (I am about to go take a shower to remove the applesauce from my hair) is for when, exactly? As a strictly practical matter I could go like 10 years without buying a single new garment. Could but won’t.
And: I live somewhere with two seasons, where half the year it’s too cold to go out without a giant sleeping-bag coat, and the other, too hot for anything other than a t-shirt dress. But all the good clothes (I am extremely particular; on an aimless shopping outing I will come home with nothing) assume a more temperate climate. Paris or Milan or whatever. How, then, do I justify this cape that I have already ordered and no regrets? For the cost per wear (this is a $40 CAD cape) to be acceptable I will need to pin down the exact day of the year when weather permits.
After considering one for months (?) I have decided against the idea of a pinafore dress. But why was I even thinking about this in the first place? Why had I gone as far as forming opinions about the ideal material for this item?
Because it’s none of it for anything. I don’t get the sense that anyone in my day-to-day life is remotely interested in what I’m wearing, nor that any of the meaning I attach to various clothes or accessories—all sorts of references, cultural or personal and maybe sometimes Fashion but not generally—is even legible to people in Toronto in 2023.
And nothing, once on me, ever looks quite how I’d imagined it. But I don’t really care? Maybe I like the clothes as objects and that they’re functional as well, as in that they go on my body, is just a bonus.