But these discrete recollections ultimately point to something much more substantial: the way that my entire personal memoir and account of self is wrapped up in fashion. The memories of where I bought particular pieces of clothing (something for each city visited!) are an important part of the story. Systematically documenting my outfits during Spring 2022 clarified multiple dynamics working at once. Perhaps it was these various selves, suddenly unmoored and unmarked by particular garments while I lounged around at home, that felt betrayed by all that pandemic comfort. Not only do I tend to keep my clothing for a long time (one of the privileges of remaining relatively thin as I age) but much of my clothing is itself older than me.įor decades now my fashion has centered a kind of slow, primarily secondhand accumulation that has generally stayed a bit off-center of mainstream trends, creating an idiosyncratic timeline of self and identity. In this way, clothing serves as a vessel for memory, a marker of identity and continuity across a lifetime of disparate selves.

To me, a good outfit is like a time capsule, containing an array of tucked away treasures that transport me back to different moments in my life. To prevent accidental repetitions, I also decided to document the process-one photo for every day of the work week, with each garment cataloged and appreciated (originally privately on Facebook, now publicly on Instagram This daily picture-taking ritual became a way of marking time and by the end of the semester I came to realize that ideas about temporality and continuity are actually key to my connection with clothing. This is how the 2022 Wardrobe Experiment began, with a promise to myself that I would spend the Spring semester exploring the ends of my closets and the bottom of my cedar chest and avoiding wearing any core garment twice (shoes, jewelry, and underwear would get a pass). So in January 2022, I decided to proactively confront this pandemic impasse and explore exactly who (or what) I was betraying with my comfy soft pants and oversized t-shirts. Yet when we in Florida returned to fully in-person teaching in Fall 2021, I found myself still “relying on the same limited number of items kept in steady rotation,” a familiar lockdown coping strategy. I am one of those people who usually finds so much joy in my clothing that the comfort of pandemic leisurewear felt a bit like a betrayal. Unlike Rhonda Garelick, whose pandemic commentary in the New York Times asks hyperbolically, “Am I Done Suffering for Fashion?” or Dismantle’s own Stephanie Laurenza, who makes a case for “ Why We Still Need Comfort Clothes,” I longed to return to my pre-pandemic wardrobe. There was something missing from these accounts for me. And yet, the underlying concerns remained relatively narrow: individual pain and comfort, or group suffering and social (in) justice.

These conversations, whether exploring the lasting power of our pandemic sweatpants or possible lessons learned about industry sustainability, have been wide-ranging. Owens lockdowns lifted across most of the United States in 2021, commentators were quick to assess the meaning of the pandemic for the world of fashion and style. Fashion & My Fragmented SelfĪ post shared by Christina D. Decades of disjointed memories and changing personal identities are threaded through those neglected garments. It was also about a kind of isolation from myself that directly connected to all that untouched clothing. Though I didn’t fully understand it at the time, my feeling of being unmoored during this period was not just about the social isolation. For almost two years during the pandemic, I barely scratched its surface. My closet contains items amassed over three decades. But, as for most people, those giddy summer 2020 adventures in pandemic living soon faded to a humdrum routine of anxious monotony.Īs the Fall 2020 semester started up and I returned to the university Zoom classroom, my wardrobe narrowed to a few comfy work tops that “popped” on screen, while the rest of my clothing languished in my closets and cedar chest, untouched. On another bored night, we streamed music from the 1990s and I pulled out my old goth clothes for a fashion show. A backyard poetry picnic provided an excuse to pair the green velvet skirt (bought in Ireland as an undergrad) with a brightly feathered vintage hat (acquired at a Midwest antique mall just after getting my PhD). At the start of the pandemic, when entertaining ourselves at home was still novel, I automatically turned to fashion.

Self reflection control outfit