My Closet Hasn't Really Changed in 10 years. Is that Pathetic?
Being a deeply embedded part of internet fashion consumption has been a trip, you guys.
I have been on the internet the entirety of my adult existence - I remember the days of dial-up AOL chatrooms, but not quite before then, and I remember when having a desktop computer was a rarity not because everyone has a laptop now but because computers of any kind were cost prohibitive. These memories qualify me as Old now: no longer the center of cultural and advertising mythologies that for a smooth decade paid my rent virtually effortless via brand campaigns, brand consulting, and affiliate marketing.
I actually never thought I’d make it past 25, so I find my thirties to be a total blessing. Especially as a queer and non-binary person of color - it is a blessing. I get to mind my business, do work that I love and find meaningful, be in love with a supportive partner, and have a nice apartment. It rules. While I am ambitious, my ambitions shifted pretty early in my twenties to be less about material financial wealth (I was never a Lean In girlie) to be way more about integrity and independence. This meant I got off the corporate ladder of industry when other people doubled down. I’m not saying what I did was a wiser or better decision - just that I am happy with the path I’ve taken.
The article, first: The Users Who Overtook the Machine | SSENSE
Looking back at this timeline is so bizarre to me, and I’m filled with both gratitude and wonder that I got to grow up alongside so many talented people, and sadness that some things shook out the way they did in large part due to queer identity and parental decisions. Tavi and Laia reflected on the London POP magazine trip they went on; I couldn’t go, because I was 15 or 16 and my parents didn’t want me to go alone. My mother sent me to Pray Away the Gay camp, instead. Conversion Therapy with Jesus. (No one in my family is Christian, either.) I don’t have a close relationship with my mother now, more than a decade later, for pretty obvious reasons.
I was coming out as a queer person the same time I was becoming Present on the Internet. It was very hard making my way to adulthood, supported more thoroughly by once-strangers on the internet than my relatives. I was so lucky to not only survive it but be able to do so online and have an archive of that journey. Reading the article made me go back to my ancient blogspot to think about the person I once was, and the fact my closet hasn’t changed much even if my life has. Some photos from that era, if you’ll indulge me:
These were taken near my parent’s home; by a photographer named Kimi Selfridge - Tan Camera came over to hang out. There were several great outfits and photos from that day. It’s fun to recognize the time capsule of nostalgia has circled back; this photo could have been taken in a bunch of different decades. I love that about it. 2013? 2014?
Notes on the outfits, sold that first blazer; still have the skirts. I believe that white corset in the first photo is my mother’s wedding corset. I still have it, even if I don’t speak to her. The shoes - in storage now, broken and in need of repair. The second outfit: I still have it in its entirety, though I haven’t worn any of those pieces in years.
I can’t get rid of that plastic blazer though, are you kidding? It’s an incredible piece for layering. Impractical and perfect. So many important things are impractical and still necessary. Yes, I sweat like I’m dying every time I wear that blazer. But I remember being twenty one and crashing on my friends couches after partying at what then became the VICE offices (LOL) and thrifting this blazer while hanging out hungover. Everyone I was with that day is now spread across the country with lots of success and still so much more coming. I keep it for that, memory when things were beginning but felt inevitable, ours to take.
So much of my internet footprint was just documenting my collection of Comme des Garcons from the beginning of my obsession; I did a blog post explaining how, as a kid that should have been on food stamps, I was able to budget my college work-study job and writing income to pay for pieces. That article has surprising stretch now - my longtime internet friend Rian Phin said it’s why she started a savings account and that it changed her entire life. (Not my words!) Rian has the most incredible archive of Rick Owens and other designer pieces now and does incredible in-depth reviews of shows and specific pieces for places like ShowStudio and elsewhere. I am so thrilled that people who grew up without wealth have been able to find ways to collect things that are meaningful to them and have that meaning envelop their life.
I’m not saying that having designer clothing is essential to your identity - that’s silly Kool Aid. What I am trying to say is that when you find something meaningful to you that is typically out of reach, being able to find resources that help bring it into your ecosystem can be transformative. My obsession with something led me to more resources, which I shared, which were shared beyond me, and I get to see that change in front of me. That is a blessing.
This Junya Watanabe dress I bought during the first NYC Comme des Garcons archive sale - there have only ever been two - was such a staple piece of my early twenties. I wore it to the photo exhibition opening I did with my friend Tayler, Kimberly Drew wore it (or another CDG piece of mine) to the Met Gala when they still did social media on behalf of the Met. It was really meaningful to me that a piece from my own collection ended up being part of the celebrations surrounding a brand that was so important to my heart.
Years later, when I was less in the fashion space and busy writing The House of Beauty, my friends Max and Rhiannon and I went to Death Valley to write and hang out. I wrote on the deck of the house we stayed in, this gorgeous glass box in the middle of nowhere, Max climbed the Valley ridges in the morning, and Rhiannon wrote poetry and wore my dress in the dust storms there.
It had rained heavily one day we were there, and we spent a frantic morning putting every pot and pan below every leak and laughing. It was such a dramatic, defiant landscape, able to hold any idea we had or wrote down with total indifference. It was like - do anything you could want. No one is watching. There’s a cyclone of dust a mile away the size of a building. Write everything down and see what happens. I dare you, says Death Valley.
One of my favorite memories of this dress was this drone poetry video we shot before we left. Max did one take of Rhiannon reading one of her poems in the dress. It was perfect. Some random old weed dealers in the desert gave us an old orange parachute and took us sand sailing. Rhiannon, I think, made her parachute a dress a few years later.
So of course - this dress is still in my closet. It will never leave me. How could it ever? I even specified in one of my early wills - I am a Capricorn with lifelong depression, I started writing my will at 21 on an annual basis, ok - that I be buried in it. It has seen so much of the world with me. It has been loved by some of the most important people in my life. And this particular collection from Junya Watanabe, I was so obsessive about it. All the straps, the utility of it, on such delicate patterns and colorways. It reminds me of a psychiatric ward outfit dripped in a field of flowers.
Seeing that collection felt like I could not only survive myself but transform the impulse into something beautiful. To find it at the sale and to be able to buy it (I wouldn’t say “afford” - it was the biggest purchase I had ever made at the time, my credit card declined initially) - I had to have it. I learned how to budget my work-study job paychecks so I could save and pay off a dress like this. I bought it, even if doing so gave me an anxiety attack. And it carried me everywhere, all around the world, from a sample sale with one of my first girlfriends to my first art exhibition in New York City, to Death Valley with my best friends, and then it went beyond me to the Met and other parties with other friends.
I don’t buy clothes often and never have. I actually record a video for myself every year of all the clothing I buy in a year - and it’s usually only a handful of things! It makes each piece meaningful. Even if my closet hasn’t drastically grown or changed in the years since I truly began collecting - the memories have gotten so much deeper. I’ve hand washed this Junya dress in every apartment I’ve ever had as an adult, bathing it like a child in the bath. It’s too risky to bring it to a dry cleaner.
I wear things until they literally fall off my body, literally. I have t-shirts held together by safety pins and prayer. This perspective made me less marketable as a fashion blogger who could parlay my consumption into endless brand deals: all I ever wanted were pieces that could last forever. I never girlbossed, never did a capsule collection. What part of that would have even been believable or authentic? Most of the clothes I wear are older than I am, and even when it is designer, it is secondhand. It always has been. I go into consignment stores across New York City in my spare time praying for pieces from collections I love. I used to look on Japanese Ebay and misspell every part of the details intentionally to see what shook out. I would buy things blindly based on a text description and my measurements. I gambled and prayed and sometimes it paid off.
I was never a Fashion Influencer in the sense I cared about Fashion’s Cycle, I just documented my personal style and tried to find people who cared about their own, too. Style that felt like a lifejacket when I felt like I wasn’t loved for who I was. If I could not be loved unconditionally, at least I could look incredible, and collect pieces that I could wear while doing things with people that cared for me, that became the evidence I was loved, nevertheless. I made art with it with my best friends. Every stain, every rip was earned. The damage that accrues is beloved. These are not investments in cultural relevance. They are love notes to a life I made with my friends.
I will be so real with you: I haven’t worn most of these pieces in years. My CDG archive has grown and shrunk year by year - I still wear it regularly, but differently, and the impulse to document my outfits online shuttered when it felt like a commercial requirement rather than a sincere letter to the universe. I stopped doing it regularly when it became less earnest and felt more like self-surveillance. Now I only document my outfits when I’m bullied into it by people that love me. I like writing more. I like other parts of my life more. You don’t need to know what I’m wearing to live in the world I live in. I don’t want you to feel an impulse to replicate my style. I want to share in a way that makes you feel excited to learn more about your own.
When people have asked me over the years how to find personal style I get confused, to be honest. The guides to shoppable content and how to embody an ideal that isn’t you - like, the French Girl, or the brat, or whomever: it has never been for me. I never related to it. It was always exhausting enough to ask myself what I wanted for myself. What made me excited to get up in the morning. What in the world was so cool that I couldn’t help but share it? That impulse is where personal style comes from to me, I think. When I put something on, when I collect something, when I “add it to my archives” - I am memorializing my excitement that it exists, that we can exist together, and that we can change each other by being in relationship.
I personify everything I purchase. Can I see myself wearing that leather jacket in ten years? If I had kids, would they inherit it? Then yes. I’ll get it and I’ll get it in every color I can find over the years. If I buy a t-shirt, I want it to make me laugh or smile or bring me comfort every time I wear it. It isn’t that it’s going to be impressive to anyone else: it’s what it makes me feel, when I see it. Take, for example, this ratty t-shirt from Rick Owens I bought from The Real Real like, 8 years ago: it is a tragedy of cheesecloth.
I got it stuck in a zipper once at a bar; it tore, I still wear it despite there now being a large hole in it I could fit my neck through. (I just tie it differently - it’s so voluminous anyway.) It at one point had cum, birthday cake, lipstick and perfume stains on it from one weekend. At that point it transformed from a t-shirt to a trophy of participation. To other people it’s a too-transparent shirt that should probably be discarded. It always falls off my shoulder. I get it messy with soy sauce all the time. But I love it. Every fucked up flaw. It is a memory of living.
I’m so grateful that I got to grow up when I did in an era where online fashion communities weren’t yet commercialized with every post. I do wish that Style.com still existed and runway archives weren’t paywalled, because we’re now at a loss of fashion education. I was able to develop my style by absorbing so many shows and years of runway seasons in an afternoon - it’s harder to see the back catalogs now, with internet decay and paywalled runway photos. Still, I love watching style videos nowadays on Tiktok from people who aren’t “famous” yet; who are still just doing fit checks at home without paid ad placement from brands. I love watching old ladies share their jewelry stacks, love watching quilters discuss how long their projects have taken and what they’ve learned from it. These are the people who make me excited about clothing. I’ll follow them in any era. I’ve been fortunate to grow up with them.
My closet hasn’t changed much since I fell in love with fashion - it’s more lived in, more actualized. I’ve swapped out impulse, sometimes insecurely made purchases for things I dreamed about for years: slow rewards. The change has been more like a tree than anything - the roots, they go deeper, towards more life to be lived.