Why So Many Clothes?

Week Eight of Why So Many Clothes? Hiding Becomes Revealing

Leggings and Tights

There is evidence of a time before leggings and tights. Photos of me wearing this black, cotton Lacoste tennis dress in a friend’s restaurant, by a beach in Thailand. My friend is Thai, I’m with several Thai friends from Bangkok.  For beachwear, this dress was acceptably modest in Thai culture.  Yet, I can’t bring myself to wear it without tights or leggings in the UK: seemingly incapable of wearing a skirt above the knee without tights or leggings.  While I’d like to think this was an independent decision, a matter of personal style and a resistance to dominant ideas about leg-lengthening lines and, more importantly, female shapes, I’m aware there’s some kind of body issue that’s the hindrance.  I need to wean myself back onto showing the skin on my legs, because it’s not modesty that’s stopping me, it’s a deep, inhibiting embarrassment, and I’m hiding from what is causing it.

On a more positive note, one of the reasons why so many clothes might be the kind of personal trends that are little fascinations with the same shape, texture, colour, pattern.  In particular…

Foumphiness

I do seem to love a foumphy skirt.  By foumphy, I mean one that goes out and in and is a bit flouncy and has its own curves.  A good example is a tiered skirt, like I’m wearing Tuesday.

Although Tuesday’s photo ended up being taken in white tights, they went on in the evening because it grew cold.  I spent the day in bare legs in a knee-grazing skirt, foumphy enough to show occasional swathes of skin.  This skirt has holes punched in the lace of the layers, so you can see little circles of sunlight on the skin underneath, if you catch it at the right angle.  Wearing it felt quite nice, with occasional but intense flashes of self-consciousness, in case too much skin could be seen; the bits I didn’t want to show, particularly the backs of my thighs.

The stripy top seemed to not-go nicely with the black and white tier near the bottom of the skirt.  Unfortunately, the pink pumps have started to disagree with my little toes, otherwise this would have been a really comfortable outfit.  I like the way the stripes sit on the round of my tummy.

Wednesday’s purple skirt is another example of the foumphy skirt (Upper Street charity shop, as was yesterday’s).  Fitted on the waist, hips and bottom, it has tucks at random intervals down the length and all around.  I used to feel really unsure about it, but today I feel so utterly myself that I have the confidence and sense of being to wear it.  I feel earthy and sunlit and want colours to go with that.  I feel a release.  Also, got the stains out of the pink jumper, and that release means it’s ok to wear and keep.

The final example of foumphy is the red and white skirt (Irish Charity Shop) I’m wearing on Thursday.  I feel like I’ve rooted in my dressing up chest, can see how wrong it is but it triggers some Red Riding Hood dream, maybe some little girl’s idea of how grown women dress. I feel comical in it, cheerful and winking although a bit nutty.  I seem to be back in tights.

How to Make Friends and Lose Lovers

The red Gap tee is better known as the Chilli Top.  Plain and misshapen with wear and years, but it holds the old memory of meeting my great friend BP dressed as a chilli, with red cords and my long-gone red mountain bike, Roberto.  Roberto was lost to bricks and oblivion, in Bristol, when he got stolen as BP and I sat and ate pasta and drank wine with two middle-aged Italian brothers in their too-lightly patronised café.  Roberto may have gone forever, but BP decided we would be friends for life, partly – or maybe mainly – because she liked that I was dressed as a red pepper.

How Many Shoes to Take on a First Date?

The pink shoes were bought for ZH’s wedding, on a day I ended up on a date with five pairs of shoes about my person.  Each pair was pale pink. I had started the day with three pairs – flip flops, heels and plimsolls – because it was summer and I was worried about how my bare feet and their thin, sensitive skin would react.  I bought two more pairs of pale pink shoes on the way to meet the man in question, as I needed two options for the wedding (one pair was given up on as they just didn’t work, a little bit like the pair of us).  These shoes are not as comfy as they look. They’re toe suckers, too big and the heel’s worn down.  You must clench your big toe to keep them on, the little ones getting uncomfortably suckered, while the odd-shaped wooden heel aggravates the base of your foot.  Not Keep.  A bigger foot would be happier, after the cobblers.

Trend 2: Liberty

Liberty prints.  Today’s blue shirt (Upper Street charity shop) is an old Liberty one, while Tuesday’s skirt was a Topshop (charity shop) imitation, I’d say.  The red linen dress is another ‘like now’, that was a hand me down from mum I wasn’t sure about.  Although it’s dated, writing this blog has made me feel a lot less inhibited about what I like, and a lot freer of the trends that are imposed, free enough to start finding patterns that emerge in personal fascinations and tastes.  The dress got a lot of compliments.  The shawl is from Thailand, and was a gift from my work there.  I’ve been too scared to wear it in case of loss or damage, which seems like a waste, but I have lost some beautiful shawls to stains, trains and mysteries over the years.

Argghhhh!

Yes, I did it, it had to come sometime and I can only blame myself for having it in my wardrobe: the psychedelic moo moo.  Walking around a residential, East London area on a Saturday, I didn’t get any hassle. Groups of children playing in the street were almost respectful (was that it?): one group told a boy to stop knocking on a miniature door in the wall of a church because of the lady (and Wolf) passing, and because it is a church.  Shopkeepers were very friendly.  I got one totally befuddled and confounded look, but otherwise, the idea I grew up with that you can wear what you want in London and we don’t mind seems to be true.  I can’t imagine being anywhere else I’ve lived and forgetting I was wearing this.  I did, and just, for the main, thought people were being nice,  friendly and smiley today.  If I find out I’m pregnant with octuplets, this will still fit, so perhaps I should keep it just in case.

Another Attempt at Something Abandoned

Ya ha. Today, Sunday, I’m growing old disgracefully.  At nearly 30, I’m wearing the things I never dared to as a teen: because of body and social issues.  I mean the things I didn’t wear at thirteen, when I should have been rocking mini-kilts (local jumble sale), like the girls with long, tanned, hairless legs in the neighbourhood of my French Exchange partner in Lyon.  I’m wearing them with leggings, yes.  The problem now is, I can’t get over not de-hairing every inch of my thighs – I rarely feel like I’ve got rid of all of them – before baring them to the world, as ten years of Endometriosis has left me with thicker, darker, more visible hairs than I can bear.  This is where my embarrassment comes from, and it’s attached to a painful, difficult condition that a large number of women experience.  One in four women in the UK are expected to have Endometriosis.  This means many other women are also coming to terms with a body that doesn’t look like what we’re shown it should.  More importantly, it feels very sore and tiring, and, moreover, personally frightening, because of the connection with sub fertility.

There is always hope.  Hopefully there will be more to say.

To today.  Last time I saw KR, I attempted a different mini-kilt, which ended up in Not Keep.  Today’s has safety pins, ergo room for the lovely fajitas KR and FL are cooking.  Moam moam.  This outfit feels fun, like dressing up, rather than trendy or conventionally attractive.

Clothes With a Life of Their Own

The vest is a semi-organic thing: bought as part of a three-for-£10 offer from a Japanese boutique on Commercial Street, when I got it back to my old office I saw it had been pre-stained under the armpits. Unworn, just treated to look that way.  I looked up Japan fashion at the time and found some similar things.  I cut off the armpits and turned it into a vest, one of my favourites.  Unfortunately / fortunately, recently I accidentally picked up one of my red gingham shoes with my armful of whites and the vest came out pink, after being washed with the shoe.  I like the bubblegum pinkness, today.

The shoes used to be a size 6.  I’m an 8.  I wore them first on a date with the same guy who experienced the five pairs of pale pink shoes. I had to get these shoes stretched, by a shop selling handmade shoes, so they’d fit.  On the date, I just used a lot of plasters.

PS Next week’s post will be up slightly later in the week than usual, on Wednesday 10th August.  See you then.

by Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week Seven of Why So Many Clothes : Because Clothes Tell the Wearer Stories

Fairytales With Endings We Change

At twenty-two, I’d been working in a clothes shop, put on full make up every morning, and bought into trends for their own sake.  By this, I mean I bought into the idea that wearing clothes marked in magazines as ‘Bohemian’ (this was 2004) and ‘Gypsy’ actually transported me into these imaginary lives. The much-parodied fashion talk about buying into dreams was a waking reality for me.

This Monday, I’m wearing my satin, aqua blue vest, with mesh trim, bought in Warehouse in 2003 at full price (about £15), layered under the white shirt.  I rushed out to buy it after seeing it in a glossy, in a section marked ‘Mermaids’, showing all sorts of watery, oceanic textures and colours.  I wore it first to a house party, with a statement, beaded necklace in more sea colours, fitted blue jeans, and stilettos.  Another wavy-haired brunette was wearing the same, Warehouse vest, in more of a sea-green, with a different, beaded, statement necklace, tight jeans, and heels.  We took a photo together: two mermaids.

Of course, this didn’t consign me to a life with my too-human legs bound forever in tight denim, my feet stabbed at each step, much unlike the sad, original Little Mermaid – although I didn’t ensnare any handsome young men either, at that party.  The vest lives on in different guises, most recently, today, as part of a quite pantomimey ensemble.

Clothes With Little Lives

I’ve written a few times about realising, through this blog and looking more closely at my wardrobe, that quite a few of my clothes are worn out.  Looking at this white, tuxedo shirt, I can see it’s past its best: rusty drops on the shoulder where I’ve brushed past lily stamens, coffee and very faded red wine on the front, if you look – and I don’t iron (once, my wonderful friend and ex-housemate KR ironed it for me, and I went unrecognised, honestly, at work the next day).  Love this shirt, though. Keeping.

The shorts are a favourite, although they don’t have any specific sentimental value.  I just like them.

I’d miss each of these items. I realise: I keep some, if not many, clothes because of how they look to me, and not how they look on me – as if they have lives of their own and I want to keep them in mine because they tell some sort of story to me as I wear them, rather than their always meaning something to my own life story or simply looking good.  It reminds me of looking at a picture book recently that I’d loved as a child: Angelo, by Quentin Blake.  I’d spent hours reading it, then adult me looked again and realised there were no words, and wondered where everything I remembered had gone.  I’m still at the dreaming stage with clothes.

I wonder if I should worry about this?

Adult Clothes

There is a large degree of adult fantasy, too.  The stripy top under Tuesday’s dress has a deep V on the chest and back, and I bought it as a reference to Brigitte Bardot.  It sits very high on the waist and looks very sixties French movie chic with high-waisted drainpipes or pencil skirts.  Today, though, I’m working practical chic, with the black dress.  Fifty cents from another Irish charity shop, and too comfy and easy (good sensible length, nice smooth, tactile fabric, sensible neckline) to Not Keep.  The strappy red sandals slip off different parts of the foot, but I want to keep them.  ZH pops up in my head, saying, as she did while we shopped on King’s Road a few years ago, that adult sandals are always a good investment.  Keep all. Except the embroidered coat – I love it, but it’s just too tight on my arms. It’s taken me four years to admit that.

Duvet Days

Wednesday is a genuine duvet day.  Really not feeling well.  Thursday I still feel unwell, but need to go out for a couple of hours to keep a promise to help a friend, before curling up in bed again.  The long-sleeved maxi feels like the closest thing to a duvet.  This dress is pure story.  I bought it in tribute to a friend’s poem for a poetry theatre event, Peter Ebsworth’s ‘The Very Brief Rise and Fall of Andy the Amoeba and his Contribution to Popular Music in the Late 1960s’ (about an amoeba who inspired the Cellular Song) and it became my Incredible String Band dress.  I wore it to my mum’s 60^th birthday shortly after, because of her love of the song and band, and my wish for her, as the song says: May the long time sun shine on you and all love surround you and the pure light within you guide you all the way home.  Like a duvet, like clothes, the dress is enveloping, comforting and full of dreams and stories.

Weathering a Storm

On Friday, I need to wear all grey and practical clothes to shift things about for a performance of The Tempest, with puppets.  The grey dress makes me feel strong and shaped, although it shows my tummy.  Back in Week Two, I gave a green dress to a craft group to become a puppet. Today, that puppet is coming to life, as Caliban.  Seeing the dress in its new role, in a beautiful performance, triggered a poem, which is on a new page in its first drafty form.

On Saturday, the Wolf and I travel to Manchester to see Bjork’s Biophilia  (yes yes, now equal to Bob Dylan for best gig ever) with the Wolf’s lovely parents.  I seem to be in storm colours, still, appropriate because it doesn’t stop raining.  I do love rain.  At the concert, people’s buttons and zips catch on the extraordinarily loose-knit jumper.  They are all very friendly about it, and one man asks if it’s a net for catching people, new friends.  Perhaps it is.  Fisherwoman is more effective than mermaid.

One man also says he would wear jumpsuits if he was a girl, as they look so comfy.  Quite right.  I knew catsuits and holey jumpers were useful.

The Dream is Over

Bjork is wearing a short, gold, leatherette dress, with a foumphy multi-coloured top and a wavy, orange wig.  She looks stunning and glorious.  Her dress reminds me of a gold bandeau dress, very similar to hers, I didn’t buy in a Glasgow charity shop.  Longing.  Did I mention Bjork is amazing?  I want to go home and dress like her.

Sunday’s dress is, like the white shirt, way past its best but still too loved to Not Keep.  Ink stains on the bottom, mottled with light bleach, and once offered the compliment: ‘I like your dress, it reminds me of my kitchen curtains.’  The velvet leggings, however, are a failed fantasy.  I’ll keep them only to keep me warm in winter, under high boots and long skirts.

Here’s the link the old green dress poem https://saranesbitt.co.uk/poems/

by Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week Six of Why So Many Clothes: Coming Up Daisies

I like it

That black vest peeking out from under Monday’s plum Warehouse (90% off) dress is one of the most sentimentally valuable things in the wardrobe.  It was a bold buy for eighteen-year-old me, when living in Bangkok.  It has a red wiggle across the waist and tummy, and a brown and red cubist design on the back.  I can’t wear it on its own now, because it has white marks, bobbles, tears, faded patches.  It’s almost offensive. I can’t get rid of it.  It’s long past its days as a really trendy item in Bangkok fashion, when I bought it in a swanky department store from ‘Fly2K’ after months of saving up the bottle.  Back then, a colleague in my office, a Thai woman of about 28 (about two years younger than I am now), used to wear the most intriguing and diverse outfits to work.  She was beautiful, with big eyes, face-framing black hair, a slim but curvy figure which she thought was fat.  She leaps to mind in a sheer, rusty and golden, printed tunic, belted with a silver threaded plait, and tight, charcoal flares, somehow officey and out of this world all at once.  When I asked her where she got all her clothes from, she laughed and said not to worry, by the time I was her age, I’d have as many choices in my wardrobe – just to keep collecting if I wanted to have that variety.  Sometimes I’ve caught a glimpse of her in the mirror, and smiled.

So, to the Warehouse dress.  I didn’t specifically like it when I bought it, but it reminded me vaguely of the shapes Ossie Clarke made.  I go in and out of phases of liking it or wondering why I have it in the first place.  Today, I like it.  The colour, comfort and relative work-worthiness.  So many clothes because sometimes I need to wait until I like them again?

I like it not

Oh dear, I’m fickle.  I didn’t like Tuesday’s green skirt when I put it on. I wanted to, but didn’t.  This was its first wear.  I thought I’d cheer it up with the rusty tights and the black corsage on the puff-sleeved tee shirt.  My mum’s staying and she says I look really good. My boss compliments the skirt.  I start to like it.  A colleague says he thinks the skirt is great but a real winner with the tights. Oh, dear. Keep.

I like it

I had an email (thank you!) asking how it felt to be thinking about my clothes every day, while writing this blog, and whether it made me tired.  The Wolf and I are talking about this experiment, on Tuesday evening, and I realise that, at this stage, I feel differently than I’d anticipated: six weeks in, not having duplicated an item of clothing, as I go through the labyrinth of wearing all my clothes.  Not oppressed, as feared, by my clothes nor by a stealthy, creeping awareness that some insidious notion of femininity and style and status ruled my life without me knowing it. Phew.  What I’m learning is that there are very few things in Not Keep because I love my clothes and clothes.

I’m increasingly finding confidence and self-expression through this experiment.  This has a lot to do with the Wolf’s camera eye and my mum’s generosity and friends’ and readers’ support.  I’ve also realised that I haven’t spent a lot of money on this magnarvellous wardrobe.

Is this too soon?  There are still drawers that don’t shut to wear through, that mysterious pile on top of the cupboard, a few bags, clothes on hangers and a pile of handwashing to do.  There are still a lot of shoes.  Still those luminous green shorts. Still so many questions.

Clothes as a magnifying glass

Wednesday’s outfit begins with one little pin. It’s a crow playing a saxophone, made by a childhood friend, for Dingwalls in Camden.  The crow’s wearing a red mac and he’s black and white with a bit of brown.  So – red halterback, black and white pirate top (Dingwalls is by the water, Camden Lock – now a very different place to when the Crow pin was made), chocolate leather jacket, black, high-waisted drainpipes, vintage Italian brogues from the 1960s, black lace socks.  The whole outfit is a magnified version of the pin, and its tone: through this, a magnified expression of feeling for the memory and the living, present person, who designed the pin back in the 1980s.

I like it not

Hmm. Thursday’s clothes are comfy, bright and playful but I’m not really playing.  I feel silly.  Always wanted to like the spotty, grey dress but one giggle from my mum and I have to admit – it doesn’t work for me.  I don’t like it, just liked the idea of dressing as a spotty librarian, the image in my head when I blew 50p on it in a Commercial Street Charity Shop. On Friday, a lady on my route to work is in a similar get together.  I narcissistically flatter myself that someone was inspired during our daily train ride but really, I think it just works for her.  As for me – Not Keep. The pink tights and lace hoodie stay though! Just maybe not together.

I like life!

Friday is a day for celebrating and showing change.  The black, slinky cocktail dress was from the sales in the clothes shop I worked in during my BA.  Now I’ve earned it: I absolutely need it to wear for an informal prize-giving, for a poetry competition.  It’s raining and I’m working outside of home all day so I need layers.  I started with a pink tee shirt but that went back in the drawer and on with Mum Style – the loose, retro shirt with fruit and flowers.  I’ve been looking for a reason and the bravery to wear this.  A rainy world needs a dose of my mum’s bright hand-me-downs to lift moods up.  Shoe-wise, the black wellies (my mum looked at them and said, ‘Not Keep?’, but I love them) are alternated with cute Lulu Guinness platforms (Irish Charity Shop).  The pink mac feels very right.  All Keep.

More magnified moods

Saturday: why can’t I just stay in the garden with my mum in the sunshine all day? She’s heading home and I have to go out to work before she leaves. Hmmph. This calls for my favourite tee shirt, bright red Jigsaw one, over ten years old and still keeping its colour.  It looks a bit stubborn against the Whistles top (hand me down from ZH), matching my childish, inner strop.  Not Keeping the skirt as it makes me feel flooby and wet – although I spent a couple of years eyeing these up in shops before getting my sticky paws on it.  It sits so high, it looks like my tummy’s been bandaged with corduroy.

I like it, I like it not

Very excited about seeing wonderful KR for roast Sunday lunch, want to match excitement with clothes.  The kilt carries the mental image of women I idolised when eleven or twelve, in the time mini-kilts and red and black combos were popular.  I really didn’t want to admit this skirt, bought on impulse in an Upper Street charity shop without trying it on, just didn’t fit right.  The reason I didn’t want to admit it is that the Wolf grumbled about the skirt and leather skirts in general, when I bought it, and that made me want to like it even more.  However, all day today I feel like I’m mid-parachute, showing my bottom as I descend on the embarrassed post box, winking petrol station, fired-up oven.  I don’t like the studs on the pockets, either.  Not Keep.  If I were to end the week on a stubborn note: I know what I like, can be convinced to like clothes with a few compliments… but not to dislike them!

By Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week Five: I Have So Many Clothes Because So Many Occasions Are Special… And So Many Women

Petticoats in Paris

Like the gorgeous, silk, cherry skirt I wore in the first week of my Why So Many Clothes experiment, ZH convinced me to buy the red, patchy, floral dress nearly ten years ago. This time, it was for a specific reason, rather than her brilliant ability to make me think of a piece of beautiful silk as a practical investment (she was right there, mind!): to wear on a trip to Paris for an old boyfriend’s birthday.  Twenty-one year old me sauntered round with nowt but a matching bra.  My sense of how much skin to show changed considerably when I worked in Lebanon, some years ago, and so, although I don’t cover up in the way I would have done in Lebanon, now I find I often can’t quite shake the feeling I need a bit of modesty.  Sometimes this is reflective of a way I learned to express and value myself – but sometimes I worry whether I’m expressing my past experiences with clothes, and what they show about how I value myself, or whether I feel dutiful, but not genuinely expressive.  It’s a question that might need asking.

The sheer top, like the dress, I bought new in the sales; the dress from House of Fraser, the top from Monsoon.  I haven’t worn the dress for a couple of years, and don’t feel as fab in it as I was expecting to when I pulled it off the hanger.   I’m not sure it sits quite right, although the concept of the different layers is appealing.  An older, Irish woman of about ninety approaches me, in Camden later today, with a horrified expression: she tells me my petticoat is hanging down.  She finds it hilarious when I explain it’s the design of the dress.  While the dress is a valued artefact of that Paris holiday, I have other, better, souvenirs – a pretty ring, metro billets, a concert ticket.  This dress, though pretty, doesn’t feel quite me anymore…  Not Keep.

So Many Women to Celebrate With Clothes

The asymmetric Lipsy skirt has only been worn twice in over ten years, because I get antsy about the hemline showing sudden flashes of upper thigh.   Both times I wore it, I wanted to nod to Marilyn Monroe: firstly with a cream, feather-collared cardigan, then peeking out from under an off-the-shoulder jumper dress.  This Tuesday, I’m wearing it with leggings and layers to channel the hotties in the British Library: women of all ages, working with rare books, wearing themselves inside out in thoughful, unpredictable and beautiful outfits.  I’ll keep the Lipsy skirt, tricky though it is, because it allows me to dress up as female icons.  The mask was made by my very talented friend MG, an inspiring woman who finds ideas everywhere.

Modesty comes into play genuinely on Wednesday. The pinky orange silk skirt is a classic ‘Clothes Make Me Happier’ specimen.  The grey jumper is, I have to admit, exhausted.  It has an unshiftable coffee stain and the fabric is worn to bobbled thinness.  It was about £6 in H&M seven years ago.  The skirt is made to last, but blows up, however, and so the leggings to match the jumper help a lot with travelling on the tube, those pesky, blowy escalators.  I love the silver glads, not sure how long they’ll last but then again, I do still have a lot of shoes to wear…

Reading, Wedding and Reading (redding)

Thursday’s satiny frock went from the office to the launch of South Bank Poetry 10, the poetry magazine I assistant edit.  As the tenth issue, it was a real celebration, and I wanted to pay tribute to the excellent poets and poems with my garb as well as my gab.  Happy Birthday SBP! As for the frock, I’ll keep it.  When my mum gave it to me a few years ago, it fell off immediately as there was nothing anywhere to hold it up.  I can’t comprehend how much smaller I must have been then.  I went for supper with the very kind EH fairly recently wearing this dress (pre-blog), who kindly recommended I stay my current shape, to fit in it.

Friday was the wedding of a very beautiful wedding magazine editor and a very nice man, friends of the Wolf.  I was at work in the morning, and needed clothes I could move about in and move stuff about in.  I didn’t like the red tunic when I bought it, but it’s grown on me.  I adore the blue dress, and the shawl.  I bought them both for the wedding, from ebay, before this project started – while bed-bound after the op, which definitely influenced the time I spent looking for the right dress and accessory – and preserved them to wear today.  I loved every movement made in them – a wonderful, beautiful wedding, a very happy day.

Saturday’s outfit is a travelling back from a wedding one: comfortable, easy.  I did enjoy this dress in its lifespan, but it’s a bit worn out now and it’s probably time to let it go.

Sunday was a day for a catsuit.  Mum and I both wore our catsuits to see Grace Jones, in Hyde Park.  I say Reading because Mum helped set up the original festival, and I wanted to note her absolute grooviness.  Not that I need to, given how groovy she is in her catsuit! Her floaty sleeves inspired me to put the cape with mine, which I bought in the market in Lebanon.  I think perhaps my experiences are more embedded in my wardrobe, in all their complexity and twists and tensions, than I’d realised.

By Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week Four: Why! I Have So Many Clothes Because I Have So Many Shoes!

For Richer

Last Thursday, I was looking for the second half of the pair of pink, satin, ballet plimsolls I was wearing for the first time ever, that day.  I started on the floor, then the shoe rack, under the bed, finally braving the Narnia-sized shoe world in the bottom of the cupboard.  Pressed against a shoe mountain, like Michaelangelo Pistoletto’s Venus of the Rags, only with shoes, I scaled the magnitude of many shoes I need to wear to fulfil the rules for my Why So Many Clothes? experiment.

Shoes are a whole other world of trouble.  Most of my many clothes worn so far seem to be hand-me-downs and presents (from my mum, and other friends and family) and charity shop finds – with the occasional bought-new, high street purchase (usually in the sales).  Shoes, however, have hit the triple figure mark.  My pink, suede heels (in front of the beach cabin) I alternate with pumps on Monday were £60 new, from Kurt Geiger – almost ten years ago, when it was possible for me to spend a utility bill on shoes.  I like the shoes a lot and I’m glad the younger me equated self-value with earning capacity in a way I now kick against – she spent on quality shoes I can still wear and love.

I love shoes.  Their shape, their reckless decoration for something so close to the ground; there is something ultimately sexy about the way we wear them… My nonsense alarm is ringing loud in my head… I’m using ellipses… but shoes! Ridiculously lovely.

As is Monday’s dress. The pictures are on the South Bank, and in the Sea Life Penguin Ice Adventure.  I put on my Noa Noa cape (charity shop) to fend off the artic temperatures in the Ice Adventure.  Turns out the instructions for what to do when you meet a penguin and how to stay warm in the freezing cold were a ruse – the penguins are in a large, sealed tank and the ‘artic’ is a children’s play area, the wandering penguins, toys for sale or to be encountered through photoshop on t-shirts and coasters.  I didn’t need to wrap up warm, but I do love the shawl and it’s a definite one for the Keep box.  The South Bank beach huts and Dishoom cafe are fun and good in the heat, like the dress.

On Tuesday, I’m relieved to last all day in the high wedges (second outing – first involved a car).  I really like the pink suede and, although I think I don’t like prints, this week shows I really like prints of painted flowers (Monday, Tuesday and Friday).  Pink suede and painted flowers make me happier.

For Poorer: Just in Case Clothes

My black fleece trousers are not a thing of beauty but they are a thing of comfort and, as I wore them as day clothes recently, they are definitely part of the wardrobe.  The moon jumper is exhausted but friendly.

The size 6 blue tee shirt under Thursday’s dress doesn’t look very great but is a useful layer and I like the colour.  I don’t realise till I’m out and about that the hem of my jumper dress is now tugged and uneven.

Three out of four items I’m keeping because they are artefacts.  The fleece trousers became day wear when I wore them for a laparoscopy operation, a marvellous thing to have been through because I feel much more well since, and my body is more ready for babies (hey, I’m showing you my clothes inside out, I feel like we’re close…too much?).  The moon jumper has some happy memories: I learned to hula hoop in it a couple of years ago, taught by a nice lady I met, on the South Bank; I needed to learn to do some poetry with a hoop and met her at precisely the right time.  The black dress I wore when it was new, smart and as unrestricting as it is now, for the interview for the job that made my life brilliant.    The blue tee shirt doesn’t have a place in my heart, that I remember, but I like the colour and it’s useful for layering.  I’m not able to Not Keep any of them, perhaps because the poorer me might need to be comfortable or scruffy again and I don’t think it’s sensible to spend more money for that!

The black pumps I was wearing with Thursday’s dress were so soaked and worn out by the end of the day – the sole stuck on with electrical tape – that I threw them in the bin on the way home (I was wearing my walking trainers).

More Playing

Friday’s clothes were play clothes: the sandals make me happier with their big, orange circles.  I feel like a bat-punk in the hoodie.  Good for playing and playing in work.  Saturday’s jumper dress was very misjudged.  BP was coming to stay, and she mentioned she was questioning what to wear.  I said clothes for sitting comfortably and talking, talking, talking – but fused the weather where she was with where I was and wore clothes for a chilly day (not the beginning of a heat wave).  It was fine in the air-con supermarket, not so much when cooking a slow roast – but the food and wool were good for talking, talking, all night.  It’s a classic jumper dress and in the Keep box.

Sunday’s vintage dress was a lucky find in a bag of fabric off cuts, in a craft cupboard.  It didn’t look very good when I found it, when I was two stone lighter than now, because I didn’t fill it out and it felt frumpy.  Now it does what I thought it would when I found it.  I spent the day imagining I might play tennis, and in reality, repotting my Christmas Tree (been meaning to since December). In the scorching sunshine, a barefoot day.

By Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week Three: My Clothes Are a Museum of My Life

Why so many clothes? Because there are so many different ways of being

Monday’s might look like a plain outfit, but these are some of my favourite clothes.  I really enjoy my curvy thighs and bum in these jeans.  I like the Bardot-esque, 50 Cents in an Irish charity shop simplicity of the top.  The cardi reminds me of my lovely friend CS’s folksy, crafty style  – although she’d add a few homemade corsages and maybe a nice headscarf.  I can see that if they weren’t quite the shapes they are, and the level of comfort, these clothes could make an outfit for disappearing in. But these clothes all help me feel good and so be present. I’m keeping them all.

Because clothes are artefacts

I’m apprehensive about wearing the butterfly-print skirt.  I used to wear it a lot, but haven’t for about two years, and now, it reminds me of a weird date, an old job, and a time I’d rather not step back into.  The memory of buying it is much happier.  Brighton, three or four years ago, the Oxfam right by where the bus stopped distracted me from getting to my brill friend BP’s party, and I bought the skirt, virtually new, from French Connection, and a really good Benneton dress, slinky with a sort of purple and white cloud print and black velvet trim. I was wearing that dress a couple of years ago, when my partner-in-crime EH and I met to talk about a poetry theatre project and watch a play, and loved the dress because of that memory.  I did a very rare thing and gave that dress away, to my friend NN, a few months ago, because she needed to borrow a dress and when I saw her in it I felt that she looked so beautiful and elegant she had to keep it.  As for the butterfly skirt, I’m very active today, and the broken button I’ve ‘fixed’ with a safety pin causes a number of wardrobe malfunctions at work, eventually tearing the fabric.  I don’t enjoy wearing it anymore, but it’s a nice skirt and it would be a shame to waste it, so if anyone wants me to post it to them to fix or recycle, please drop me a line.

I feel ungrateful for saying this, but I don’t quite feel quite right in the black net skirt I wear on Wednesday.  It’s lovely, but I think I look like a goth fairy scrubbed clean.  I want to put it in the Not Keep box, but it was a present from my mum.  I’ve been looking at it, slung over a chair in limbo, and feeling like I want to keep it just to remember that my mum gave it to me.  I can’t give it to a charity shop or sell it because that feels somehow mean, out of the spirit of the skirt’s purpose, so I’m going to give it to a friend who my mum knows and loves.  The navy blue coat makes me feel amazing – also a gift from my brilliant mum, who (very kindly and generously) insists on buying me coats and posting them to me, even though I have quite a number already…

I’m trying to wear all of the tights and leggings I’ve been hoarding, and Thursday’s the day for the yellow and purple flowery tights.  I’ve got through loads of tights by discovering that many of the ones in my drawer are holey and ripped.  One pair only had one leg.  I’m feeling a bit self conscious about these tights, but they have a good memory, of going to the circus with a cocktail dress and yellow wellies on the Wolf and I’s first anniversary celebration.  I was also wearing them with this red coat and my glasses when I stepped out of the house one morning, and a man shouted out of his car: ‘Hey lady! You look like Ugly Betty!’  I was a bit upset, as he was the first person to speak to me that day.  He got really confused, shouting, ‘In a good way! You look like Ugly Betty in a good way!’ Ah well.  It beats the guy who tried to chat me up by pretending to mug me at a cash machine.

Hoarding clothes is like being able to time travel, secretly.  The tight, polka got skirt I’m wearing on Friday takes me, in the present, to the Wolf’s cousin’s band’s gig, and also to BP’s dotty spotty party three years ago, and to the rustle of the church jumble sale where I bought it for 10p.

Because I want to be seen

For the Wolf’s birthday celebrations, we’re going to see Bob Dylan in Finsbury Park.  This is what happens in my head, as I put on the skirt.  Bob Dylan says, ‘Nice skirt, it’s very colourful, what’s your name?’

‘Sara, I was named after your song.’

‘Well, Sara, would you like me to sing it for you?’

‘Thanks Bob Dylan. Actually, it’s my boyfriend’s birthday.  Please could you sing ‘Forever Young’?’

‘Forever Young? How about, Happy Birthday?’

Then all of the festival goers join Bob Dylan in singing happy birthday to the Wolf.

I’m really wearing it because I asked him, of all my clothes, which he really liked, and he thought of that skirt.  It was a hand-me-down from my friend ZH, along with a matching shawl.  The turquoise, beaded top under my black jumper was a hand-me-down from the amazing GM, and my 94-year-old  relative gave me her coat.  I love wearing all these beautiful women’s clothes and bringing them with me.  I’ve got black wellies on my feet, and had the skirt tucked into my waistband to protect it from the mud.

On Sunday, I wear the hat in tribute to Bob Dylan.  It was the best gig I’ve ever been to.  The hat and sunglasses are effectively holding my head together and I don’t feel good and think I don’t look good.  I’m wearing Calvin Klein vest and skirt, a nineties tunic jumper and Camper shoes, all charity shop finds.  I bought the shoes for about £2 on a rainy day in Glasgow, when the ones I was wearing got soaked and my feet were cold.  I think I don’t really like them, and my toe escapes.  I’m thinking the shoes and skirt are both going in Not Keep.

Then I see myself through my boyfriend’s eyes, through the camera, and I look nothing like my bad view of myself.  In the weekend’s photos, he shows me the possibility of beauty in his camera’s eye, that maybe I have so many clothes because I like them and maybe I even like myself.  One thing he shows me, clearly, is that he really sees me.

By Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week Two: Appropriate or Inappropriate?

Dressing for Your Body Shape

Yesterday’s ‘comfy Bond girl’ experience seems to have given me a bit of va-va-voom, as I spend today’s work-from-home in another jumper dress. When it comes to leaving the house, I realise I appear to be dressed, although I’m not convinced until I put on my over-knee, grey pirate boots (new, Kurt Geiger, 2006, worn to shreds, yaharr).
Bear with me on this one – I usually wear this green jumper dress when I’m bloated or crampy, as I think it flatters me while covering me up. Without the delusions of monthly lady pain, I catch my reflection and realise I look like an algae-covered moomin. What’s worse, the dress feels horrible: it’s clingy in the wrong places, feels tacky to the skin, doesn’t move well and rides up my bottom and down on my cleavage. I can only remember enjoying wearing it once, accidentally, with a pair of orange tights (I enjoyed the banter with strangers about looking like my family’s national flag).

Two quid in a charity shop and no longer fit to go back to one, it’s gone from Not Keep to a new life with a community craft group’s puppet.

As I decide on the green dress’ fate, a stubbly, short-haired man strides past me in a long-sleeved, black lace maxi dress with a brown leather belt and brown desert boots. Might this be inappropriate in some social rules? To my eyes, in that moment, he looks like he’s enjoying being in his body and clothes. This seems a lot more appropriate than what I had been putting my body through with that sticky, bulky green jumpy dress.

Dressing Your Age

Some days, I don’t feel like getting dressed, so dressing how I feel would be inappropriate: on the tube, at coffee with a new friend and a book launch. I can’t think of anything to wear and my wardrobe is an overwhelming creature. Two of my first attempts go into the pile for mending. As well as enjoying the fabric of the skirt I end up in, I find myself appreciating the change in my bigger body. The band of the skirt used to hang off my hips, and now, going no lower than my waist, I like the ra-ra-ness, the swooshy, curvy, out-outness.

With pumps and a tee, I worry I look like a little girl, for a nearly thirty year old. As the tube pulls in, I see a nine year old girl, dressed in a waxed beige trench, probably designer. She has teamed it with demure, tan-toned tights.
The man whose lace dress was appropriate for him in the world and the little girl dressed as a sophisticated businesswoman / international spy get me thinking about what is appropriate – to me, but not me in my own bubble.

How Do I Wear Myself to the World?

Last week had a lot to do with hiding – till I was ready to come out of my shyness in a much-loved dress or till I felt like my clothes were making me invisible. I didn’t like making myself disappear, and got less neurotic over the week. Today, Wednesday, I strode out in a sheer, patterned top I’d been really looking forward to wearing – another Irish Charity Shop purchase. I’m wearing a skirt I love – it’s been on the same adventures as last week’s black linen skirt. This is appropriate for my identity, my place in the world… except, when I leave the house, a storm breaks out. My shoes (another pair of black, fabric pumps) are soggy, feet cold, top too thin. I had to take my top off, dry it and put it on again – and walked The City with it inside out for two hours. Totally inappropriate. At least the label says ‘French Connection, Size 10’.

My Thursday clothes are appropriate to toothache. I expect to get a tooth extracted at the dental hospital, so wear clothes fit for a dentist’s chair and having my skull tugged at. The scarf is from a clothes swap, which I organised, along with the members, as an informal English-learning opportunity for a women’s project at a charity I used to work for. That’s one of the few times I’ve brought myself to relinquish clothes, before now. Even then, I had to psych myself up, putting the things I was giving away in a bag, then taking them out again, a number of times.

Clothes Are for Coming Out to Play

As well as my usual Friday work, I’m helping out a community theatre group then meeting two lovely friends I haven’t seen for ages, EH and AM. Today’s outfit – purple glitter leggings, seagull-print culottes and an oversized white shirt, with my black pumps – is great for moving sets for the play, and then for relaxing and enjoying the pub and the brilliant live jazz fusion night at the amazing Troy Bar on Hoxton Road. An ever so slightly zany outfit, still covered up, but it feels totally appropriate to who I am in the world I’m in today: a fun, energetic, moving about sort of day.

I realise on Saturday, in a way I’ve failed to previously, how much I love the thin, flowery dress (£1, Commercial Street Charity Shop). It’s too out of fashion for me to have acknowledged how much I value it but I love it, feel homely, sexy and cool – even though it’s a high-necked, midi, thin cotton shift. It did cause a bit of inappropriateness when crossing the Thames: I had to walk the bridge with a lot of folding-a-parachute sort of action on this blowy day.

I finish the week in my Brick Lane market-appropriate outfit. It is probably inappropriate to go to the market wearing what I see as a French, late-70s market lady’s outfit – shopping dressed as an imaginary stallholder – but to me it feels celebratory. And what could be more appropriate, as today the Wolf and I are meeting up with my younger brother? In the rain, my short, black, shiny, PVC mac finally becomes ok to wear, after spending four years in my cupboard.
The green moomin dress is the only thing for the Not Keep box this week, that I’ve worn. A pair of grey PVC Mary Janes that seemed to be burning the tops of my feet through my tights are also in, having not left the house. I’m getting a bit more confidence in who I am in my skin and in my clothes, in the world. Maybe I have so many clothes because I don’t always feel confident enough to believe it’s appropriate to be myself out there.

By Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Week One: Clothes Are for Hiding

Clothes are for Hiding Until You’re Ready to Come Out

I come off the phone to my mum on Monday morning panicking about what to wear on this first day.  I’m thinking about jeans.  I tell myself I’ll do this so I’m effectively banned from that one pair, at least, for however long this experiment takes.  I have the feeling I rely on jeans, wearing them instead of discovering all the strange things in the back of my cupboard and the drawer that sticks.  Jeans are safe, comfortable, unintrusive, unchallengable.  Maybe I’m a bit scared of what I’m going to find in my wardrobe.  I’m working from home, so don’t have to make a decision till the evening, when I’m going to an Akron Family gig.  I’ll probably wear jeans, in case I feel too uncool in my own clothes.

At some point during the day, I realise that if I wear a pair of jeans now, I might end up in sequinned gowns in the daytime at the end of this.  I have a feeling I have more pretty evening dresses than jeans.

I also finally have a lightbulb moment.  Why am I wearing jeans? This is pretty much a date. My man – who for his privacy’s sake I’ll call the Wolf – is taking me to the gig, and we’re going with a few friends. Why not wear something I feel romantic and fun in?

I close my eyes and imagine myself feeling that way.  I’m wearing the red, jersey dress I was wearing when the Wolf and I got together.  This is the same dress I was wearing at a party a year or so before, when two men, two best friends, had an open competition over me.  It’s definitely a flattering dress.  Moreover, it has pockets and heavy fabric so I do feel quite at ease in it – it’s not going to blow away and if I’m feeling self conscious, I can put my hands in my pockets and hide a little bit.  Sexy dress, still for hiding.  I feel apprehensive about the tulip skirt looking dated, which I put down to the dress being one of the few things I’ve bought new from the high street in the past four years (from French Connection).  If it’s new, particularly if it’s high street, it dates, and that might invite criticism.

I wear it with a stripy cropped cardi, originally from Mango but actually from a charity shop on Upper Street, white tights and black t-bar heels (£2 from a charity shop on Commercial Street).  I like the shoes, because they fell out of the sky to go perfectly with the dress I wore to meet the Wolf’s family for the first time.  The outfit as a whole Wolf recognises from when we went to see Alice in Wonderland, when I also had a red headband and a red, heart-shaped bag, to channel Alice.

On the way to the gig, I feel self-conscious.  But by the third song, the band have given us such clear instructions on how to move, teaching us a really daft dance, and are so brilliantly good, that I’m totally relaxed and happy to be wearing something a little bit celebratory.  Of all things, my teddy bear cape gets a lot of compliments from the other chaps (Glasgow charity shop).  Back home, I look at my dress and I love it.  It will never date, because it is me and will come with me.  It might wear out. Everything goes in the ‘Keep’ box.

On Tuesday, I’m still hiding, just for different reasons.  I’m going for dinner at my friend from school’s house, and want to wear something comfortable with room for my tummy and for sitting around talking, without being really casual.    I’m in head-to-toe Mum Style: my mum’s old skirt, and a peasant blouse she bought two versions of and gave me my choice of colour.  I wanted to wear pretty sandals but it was too cold and I got embarrassed about my feet, so I wore chocolate brown biker boots.  This felt better, more defiant, as I was feeling too soft and booby; now, I felt piratical.  Oddly, while I felt like this outfit was very me, I felt very embarrassed by it as a result.  But I’m going to keep it.

Clothes Make Me Happier

Oversleeping is not a good start to the day, so I put on my Chinese Spiderman t-shirt, which makes me feel happy and relaxed.  I wore it with dark blue flared jeans, and pink pumps.   At lunchtime, I got attacked by a cherry tomato, although the little fruit would probably claim self defence as I was sticking a fork in it.  As well as my eye, it got my spidey t shirt, but all is well.  It made me realise how much affection I can develop towards clothes.  Unfortunately, when I told the Wolf, he pointed out that he actually hadn’t given me this t-shirt: it was one of his favourites. It’s his again now, so in the ‘Not Keep’ box by default.  I can start stealing it again when I finish my experiment.  The Levi’s jeans have a strange waistband, which is cut so that my tummy hangs over it, but I’m keeping them to wear with longer tops as I like the fit on the legs and they are handy.

Clothes Are for Hiding Until You Disappear

Mister Green Stripey – he dead.  I bought the green stripy tee for 50 cents in an Irish village charity shop, because I thought it would be good to own a nice, inoffensive, neat casual top.  The green t-shirt just isn’t me to the point that it makes me feel like I’m disappearing.  I wore it today because I decided to go for a swim suddenly, and had to make the switch to leaving-the-house in two minutes to get to the session in time.  It’s in the ‘Not Keep’ bag.  The shoes were inconsequential black pumps.

Clothes Come on Adventures

The linen skirt I wore with the green tee is crushed, the black dye is fading, but I love it.  It’s been on adventures with me from Bristol to Bangkok and Beirut.  It will come on more: it is perfect for casual modesty in super hot weather.  If I need it for work again, I’ll dye it black.  Oddly, for something I feel so attached to, the skirt started life as my uniform in the shop I worked in part-time in my early 20s.

As the course of my last evening with the green stripey tee goes on, I feel guilty, and a bit mean.  Then I imagine it being used in a more positive way, and I feel excited for it.  I look at its neat green stripes and imagine that it’s happy.  I know that they’re not sentient beings, but perhaps I have so many clothes because it has felt ungrateful not to keep them.

Clothes are Beautiful

On Friday, I am going from work to see a 94-year-old relative, then out to the pub.  I haven’t seen my relative for a few weeks, so I want to wear something nice, as she usually notices what I’m wearing.  I wear one of my most beautiful things: a cherry pink skirt which my friend ZH talked me into buying ten years ago, in the sales, in Jigsaw.  I felt then that it was too old for me, but she said it would be an investment.  It took me two years to find the first occasion to wear it: her wedding.  After that, I don’t remember wearing it until recently, in the past few months, when I’ve had the confidence to wear something so lovely on a more regular basis.  I’ve been reassured by Jil Sander’s t-shirts and skirts.  I fell in love with the feel of the silk, the play of light from the fabric, the thought behind the curved seam across the front.  I particularly love the colour.

In the office, I was chuffed to find pretty much everyone wearing pink.  However, the confused responses to my noting this detail made me think that maybe the skirt isn’t pink, but red.  I don’t always see colours the same way as others.  I have a yellow bag that I only remember is green when I leave it on my bedding and realise it blends.  I was also asked if I’ve lost weight.

I had braved bare feet, with bronze, flat sandals.  My elderly relative took a close look at them when I arrived, and instructed me to go and see the chiropodist who was visiting the home that day.  She was also worried I was cold and half naked, so I showed her the shawl I had in my handbag. A bright pink one with red and purple flowers.  ‘That’s very good taste, is that your mum’s?’, she asked. When I left, she laughed, with a twinkle: ‘I know, you’re off to see a boy!’  She did love the skirt, wondering if it was taffeta, or crepe-de-chine, and concluding it was pure silk.

The white, cotton vest I wore on Saturday is another piece of clothing I enjoy looking at: the scalloped edges and embroidery.  It makes me feel like I’m in the country in an old Italian movie.  There are times when I don’t like it, when it makes me feel frumpy.  I haven’t worn it since last Summer, when I rarely did, although the previous year, it was one of my favourite tops.  It was 2 Euro in an Irish charity shop.  I love my shorts, for a similar reason to the vest: I feel like I’m in the country in Italy when I wear them.  All the weight I’ve put on in the last year or so makes me want to hide my legs in leggings, but as this was the last time I could wear these trusty shorts – bought in DP in Bristol Airport when I was nineteen, and worn with leggings for a number of projects because they’re easy to move around in – I thought I’d wear them with navy blue tights, to give them a bit more of a place in my outfit.

I adore the Liberty’s scarf, which I’ve inherited, because it’s beautiful. It suited market wandering in the sunshine.  After Friday and Saturday, scarves are now in on the experiment, as I have a whole drawer of them, I rarely wear most of them, and I’m eager to know why I’m hoarding them all.  Once I’ve worn them all once, I can wear them again if it’s cold (an exception – all other clothes are once only till the end).

Clothes Make Me Happier 2

On Sunday, it’s raining and I’m mooching about the house.  I decide to mooch dressed like a cosy Bond girl, a mock-60s-Stella ad girl in something soft and comfortable, rather than in my usual tracksuit.  My black and white Zara dress (charity shop) had leapt out of the cupboard the day before.  I’d never worn it, as I thought it looked too small, and was pleased to find it fitted.  I felt good. All of Friday to Sunday’s clothes are in the Keep box.

By Sara Nesbitt Gibbons

Why Why So Many Clothes?

I’m wearing every single one of my clothes once and only once until I have none left to wear, to find out why I have so many of them. When I do all my laundry, I don’t have enough space to put it away. ‘Wardrobe’ actually means a cupboard, a chest of drawers and some boxes and bags, some stuff on the floor, hanging from door knobs and also from bookshelves. The communal coat stand looks like a monster thanks to all my coats. I have clothes I’ve been wearing since I was a teenager, and I’m going to be 30 any day now.

Having to wear something once and not again – for an eeriely unknown number of months – makes me remember what I have and why I value it enough to keep it. It’s about a relationship with clothes and perspectives on value. At the end of each day, each item is designated for one of two boxes: Keep or Not Keep. I don’t know how many clothes I have so I can’t do the maths to work out how long this will take. I’m leaving that as a mystery to help answer the question… Why do I have so many clothes? Thanks for joining me.

Exceptions are, of course, essentials that I’ll genuinely have to wear more than once: shoes and coats, tights and leggings (as well as anything compulsory that comes up, like a uniform or hospital clothing). But I’m wearing every single coat, pair of shoes, tights and leggings at least once, to make sure they don’t get away with it – some end up in the Not Keep box.

Sara Nesbitt Gibbons