Style Resolutions : 2021

I lost the original plot amidst the optimization for sustainability, the right shopping, not-shopping, zero-waste, learning about the craft, … etc. I had stopped dressing for my pleasure and to look good in my clothes. I forgot to iron my clothes and to pair them well. I forgot to take care of my body. The balance between being good and personal aftercare, has been lost. A pandemic year when everyone is slipping towards sweatpants is somehow the year when I found my spark again. So be it.

Photo Credits : Jessie Neeley. Wear About Blog.

After what seemed like a 10000th article on French elegance, with comparison to how American’s not doing it right,….. I may have gotten confused … or prejudiced. Nothing but luxury goods started to look good to my eyes. I was cultivating a certain white European luxury standard : looking up to it, adoring it, buying it, craving it, …… I have been sliding down a slippery slope with no end in sight till Lord Hermes himself started appearing in my dreams. I need to step back to find joy in nativity, simplicity and frugality again. To rethink and unlearn. Lucky for me, my current interest is something humble : denim. My instagram feed, the outward manifestation of my internal fashion desires, is unfollowing fashion woman posing with a luxury bag in hand, and is seeking out humans who wear their denim simply and well. Away from the silk blouses and garments that are conceived for the runway. Towards people of the land and the streets.

Can I learn to wear jeans and a t-shirt well ?

{ Maybe ? In my opinion, the simplest garment look good on women with natural beauty. Next best body type is that of a woman who doesn’t care about beauty standards and is confident in her own skin. Next next best body type is a toned and fit one. I can pursue latter options. }

Can I learn to pair tshirt+denim with a vintage accessory like a western belt or worn in shoes ?

{ One has to try to know. }

Can I wear a cotton shirt+denim with a belt, and be content ?

{ One can try. }

Am I too old to pursue this look ?

{ errrr … she wolves don’t think this way. They go out and play. I want my clothes to look like me : aging, worn in, ugly. I don’t want anything that’s too pretty. The purpose of clothes isn’t to make an image of myself that glorifies some beauty standard. My clothes should serve me. Thats the start, the middle and the end of personal style. }

Can I adore something this simple, in the long term ?

{ I can try. }

Most importantly : Once we start going back to an office, can I wear it ? Denim on denim and t-shirts are casual heaven. But will I look out of place in the East Coast offices ?

{ I hope that a more casual work place survives the pandemic. }

I like being obsessed about learning something new. I like how I start knowing nothing, let the curiosity grow, develop a desire to know more, ride the initial honeymoon learning curve where the return is high for every little effort put in, the becoming of an amateur, the discovery of experts, the marveling at their expertise, …. and so on. I want to learn about denim.

For a long time, finding that unique over-the-moon mysterious vintage pieces with provenance in Europe/NYC/SF/Rajasthan have been on my radar. It involves time, huge carbon footprint, money and knowledge to materialize. Have I fetishized newness and acquisition in vintage too ? There is a solution. A very efficient one. Me and my current closet. DIY : Do It Yourself.

Nice things have happened to me. I couldn’t have dreamt of Goodyear welted shoes or full grained leather or twill fabrics or cashmere sweaters or a double wool coat a decade ago. Not in my price range or knowledge base or dreams.

My clothes are long lasting to the point that I have said “die, dress, die. I am so tired of you”. I have aged out of my short dresses while they have stayed functional after being worn 100+ times. Material durability is winning over psychological durability. I have been buying well made things for the past few years. A good chunk of my closet has hit 50+ wears and are at my service. If someone were to take these items away from me, preserve them in a time capsule and sell them to a 45-year-old me for a markup, I think I would be gullible enough to fall for it. Again.

The coats and jackets I currently own, a tad more worn in – yes, I will take them.

The denim blouse I have, a few shades lighter with wear and a few cool looking mends – yes, I will take it.

Raw denim, no longer raw – Yes please, I will take it.

Those gorgeous burgundy oxfords of mine, lot more worn in – Yes, I will take em.

I am in a position to hold on to my clothes and to wear them to our mutual glory. Finding cool vintage clothes is maybe a tad too taxing for my current energy levels, but I can be the creator of vintage. Worn in beauty can be bought, but is more authentic when made, isn’t it ? Should I be a Lover-Wearer-Maker-Mender, or a Purchaser ?

I haven’t decluttered in a long time now. And I won’t.

{ A comment I once got from a wise reader stayed with me : “I make my own holes. Thank you very much. ” She was lamenting the idea of distressed jeans. }

Currently, I am really enjoying wearing my own clothes. The plan is to not wear the 3 favorite garments all the time, but to distribute wear so that I may have this exact closet for the longest time. DISTRIBUTE WEAR, is hardly a resolution but that is what I need. Its the “one must cultivate one’s own garden“. Its the “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid”

Boundaries are structures that protect what is within them and allow their contents to solve smaller, more manageable design problems than would be possible in a perfectly interconnected system.

On Boundaries, Ritual, and Beauty.

What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t improve. In my opinion, a catalog is essential to budget for a sustainable wardrobe. You know what you have and can see it all in a spread sheet. You know what’s not getting worn and can wear it. You know what’s getting worn too much and scale back. It’s a kind of raw honesty with the self. A closet journal was a 2020 style resolution of mine that got executed and took a life of its own. Mine is fabulous and ever evolving. It’s got photos, numbers, love notes, descriptions, style notes, … etc. It’s becoming a blog of its own. Some day, when I become a wise old woman, I can look back and see every garment that I have worn and loved.

on buying shoes. I have enough for this lifetime.

on buying short dresses. I prefer midi/maxi dresses now.

on buying silk shirts. Less hand washing.

on buying sweaters. I have enough.

on buying t-shirts. I have enough.

on buying lounge clothes. I will wear short dresses that I cant wear to the office, come spring.

My makeup bag is currently empty. So empty that I miss how good my skin can look. When the shelter in place became the way of life, I threw away all the expired products in the hope of starting afresh in the new world. I can see myself : with all the unwanted facial hair and blemishes. I am fine with it for now. It reminds me of what I need to do for a more long term solution : save for laser hair removal and wear sunscreen.

Once I get vaccinated, I plan to go to the Ilia and find a foundation.

Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing. It is making a spreadsheet of your debt, enforcing a morning routine, cooking yourself healthy meals, and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction solution. It is sweating through a workout or confronting a toxic friend, getting a second job to save money, or figuring out a way to accept yourself so that you are not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything all of the time. True self-case is not salt baths and chocolate cake. it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to escape from, and that sometimes means doing the ugliest thing you have to do.

Brianna Wiest.

Building a high quality closet is hard. It requires time, money, discipline, work, knowledge, luck, a market that gives you options, …

Being content is supposed to be easy, but has continued to be the harder part of minimalism. No one warned me about the monkey mind that jumps around refusing to calm down. The years of grazing on fashion as an escape from life, has not helped. Reaching out to fashion every time my heart takes a down dive, has only made things worse in the long run. The un-do-ing is taking more time than I would have liked. Mindfulness is a practice.

The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit.

Jim Harrison, Off to the Side: A Memoir

Everything is okay in moderation. Almost nothing is okay in excess. No more than N* additions this year. I upped this number from (N-5) because I am going through some inner renaissance. There is the liberty in not working from an office. I miss the tunic/kurtha style garments that I used to wear when I lived in India. Can I wear them in my everyday life, again ? Since the election, a leash has been taken off my immigrant neck. I want to try wearing western-style garments I see on women who live in rural America. I have been putting off some of my desires in the fear of uncharitably being kicked out of the county by an orange monster named 45. ( I will have no need for warm clothes and most of my shoes if I move back to India. ) I am a tad more optimistic about making a home here for the next 3 years at the least and have gone ahead with buying that denim shirt I wanted.

Let the pieces be vintage that are cheap on the dollar. Find the forgotten ones on Etsy instead of the internet famous stores. Do not spend frivolously during this economic recession. I don’t know what’s in store for me this year or the next.

(*N : I am keeping this number a secret because it seems to attract women from two camps. One camp screams “depravation”, “you are virtue signaling by counting. You are no different than the ones who brag about how many cars they own”, “do what makes you happy”, “you are not living your best life” and “you are impeding progress/innovation”. The other camp shouts “not sustainable enough”. However fair the critique/criticism, I don’t have the mental bandwidth to invite more of it now. Wait till next year won’t you ? )

My jewelry box went forgotten for the last four years. I don’t intend to sell it all away. I want to be that woman who wears her accessories well, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I don’t know how. I often feel over the top even when I wear the tiniest of jewels. On the other hand, being a hoarder clashes with my sense of self and I won’t have it. The solution : Wear something from the jewelry box every day. Let that be a tiny touch of glamour for the days that have been too domestic for my liking.

Over the years, I went from being type A to anti-type-A. Went from very strict way of living to loosing that discipline. Something about living simply and sustainably made me stop craving lot of goals like wealth, air travel, prestige, capitalism on steroids, the so called perfect body, etc… It was like loosing a religion. It punctured my world view. I spiraled out into an existential crisis. How do you reconcile when you learn that everything you are taught to desire, is hurting fellow humans ? Hyper optimizing for carbon footprint & activism were born out of the void and confusion. I stopped wearing sunscreen because it came in a non recyclable tube. I stopped going to the gym because yoga is zero waste and only uses body weight. I stopped running because I didn’t want to buy plastic sneakers. I lost my passion for AI because most of the work was going into making gadgets fancier or to get us addicted to social media/our phones. I wanted to homestead and write a book instead. No body around me understood my personality shift, including myself ….. An existential crisis it was.

Today, I think I found a balance, developed a philosophy on living and am doing the sort of work I can respect. A puppy can teach you a joyful way of being without needing carbon spewing grand things. A lover, a poetry book, a car, a knapsack and some milage can make country side travel delicious and can aide with mind un-numbing. The pandemic hasn’t taken it away from me. Finding sustainable happiness is a fine aspiration. With it, my desire to grow and better myself has returned. I want to eat healthy, exercise and grow strong. I want to fix my skin and hair. I want my toned body, back. I never want to let myself go again.

“The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”

― Jim Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent

Style is a way of being. For a women who lives in uniforms of her choice, its mostly independent of fashion. Fashion’s contribution, if any, to my life, has been headache, heartache and heartburn. I am weening-off fashion because it’s time spent with no real return. Knowing what’s on the runway and Net-a-porter, cant improve my style any more. I have hit the wall on knowledge/pleasure I can accumulate from staring at images, shopping and wearing new clothes. I am in the phase of my style journey, where reaping the rewards of investments already made is in order. There is no need to constantly over-stimulate myself and then run ragged acting on the resulting impulses … This is me safe guarding my time, money and energy. The purpose of all these years of exploring, is to exploit what has been learnt. The purpose of writing a blog on personal style isn’t to keep writing about purchases and fashion indefinitely. Nor is it to become an internet outfit maker giving advice to strangers on how to wear their clothes. It is not to make my consumption as conspicuous as possible and talk about minimalism in excess. It’s to use this journal as an aide to live better and well. Being stuck in a fashion cycle, doesn’t bode well with the idea of good life I have for myself.