Let me begin by describing the outfit I am currently wearing. On my feet are a pair of lovely blue gum boots. They are lovely because they are blue and puddle-able. I don’t need to wear boots to write but as I’m trying to hit this deadline, I’ve been rewarding myself with regular sessions in the garden.
Under the boots I am wearing two pairs of socks. The outer pair are a thick wool type that provides good warmth and a solid all-around compression. The pair that directly touches my feet are thinner, softer, and are without seam lines on the toes. I wore my first pair of these a few years ago and my whole world changed. Until that moment I had no idea I was so irritated by the stitching in regular socks or how energy-depleting it is to be unable to ignore your own socks. These days, I make every effort to avoid socks with seams. I also cut out any and all clothing tags and steadfastly refuse to wear any kind of underwear made of lace or anything remotely lace adjacent. And I am confident that the undertaking of these measures has made me a much happier person.
I am also wearing a pair of my favorite pants. I have several of these particular slacks, and I have worn very little else during these long months of quarantine. They are a good fit, which is difficult to find for my particular body type, so I stocked up as soon as I discovered them. They have a lot of pockets, which pleases me because hands are so heavy and purses are difficult to keep track of. The best quality of these breeches, however, is that they stretch. A lot. They are not sweatpants. I want to be very clear about this fact. The name sweatpants is enough to turn me off the wearing of such an item of clothing. But beyond that, I don’t like loose-fitting clothing, as a general rule, because where there is room, there is waft, and where there is waft there is unpredictable touching. To avoid this dreadful fate, I seek out pants that boast both stretch and structure.
On top I am wearing three layers. A bra which I’ll describe by telling you that I do not think about it when I wear it. Over that I have a T-shirt made of a lovely soft cotton, constructed with minimal seams and was made, much to my delight, sans tags. On top of the tops lives a fairly nondescript windcheater because I love nothing more than cheating the wind quietly, without fanfare.
On my head I’m sporting a woolen beanie that my mum knitted, on top of which is a pom-pom that my dad made because mum asked him to. Lately, hats have been a permanent feature of my “look” because it has been many months since I’ve been able to visit a dresser of the hair, so my usual short crop has become a straggly, intermittent face-touching menace. And like I said, I am not a fan of unpredictable contact.
In order to complete this picture of me in this moment I should add that every single item of clothing I have on is blue. This is not an accident. Every item of clothing I own is blue. To be sure you are following my drift here, you should know that this too is not an accident. Yes. You guessed it (because I led you here): I am one of those nauseating types who adheres to self-imposed wardrobe restrictions.
No doubt you’ve heard at least one of those ambitious, entrepreneurial business types—think Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg—making a point (bragging) about wearing the same thing every day. The theory is that they’re too busy doing important things to think about something as silly as clothing. You’ll save energy, they’ll declare, decision-making energy, they’ll clarify, that apparently can be funneled exclusively into “growing your business.” What annoys me about this apparent time-saving minimalism is that all too often the people spruiking it are the very people who make millions, sometimes billions, off of peddling distraction and/or the desire for perpetual change. Outside of the tech industry, the other place you can regularly find exponents of the limited-wardrobe practice is the fashion industry, which is infuriating for a whole other set of exactly the same reasons.
There are other celebrated proponents of this “less dress, more code” idea, notably Albert Einstein, who is not famous for being in the business of business building. What are we to make of this? Well, nothing. When a man announces to the world that he wears a restricted or pared-down wardrobe, all he has done is taken expected behavior, heightened it, and then confused it with an interesting idea. Honestly, it is akin to a penis owner bragging that they only ever urinate while standing up. If you thought about it at all, it is kind of what you would have expected, but ultimately you resent that your brain power has been diverted to the topic.
But when a woman, and I mean any woman, not just the wealthy, powerful, and public-facing ones, chooses to reject buying into an ever-evolving wardrobe, it can more reliably be categorized as a genuinely revolutionary act. It is revolutionary because to be considered successful as any gender in this world you must dress accordingly. And for women that means you are expected to never wear the same thing twice, and feel great about it, excited even. If you fail to do so, you may very well fail at qualifying at woman. Take, for example, lesbians, particularly those of us of the unapologetically butch variety. We have been a much- and oft-maligned figure for choosing not to dress according to the ladylike dictates of any given era. The stereotypes of my people begin with but do not end with the comfortable-shoe insult. I call it an insult not because it lacks truth, but because of the rather horrific underlying premise it perpetuates: that when it comes to the “not men” of our species, physical discomfort all too often equals correct.
The reason I have decided to drastically minimize my wardrobe has less to do with revolution than you are probably imagining right now—though I will not shy away from that implication. My decision to only wear blue, comfortable clothing (not frilly, not lacy, not overly adorned) was made because my sense of self is not defined by how the world sees me, it is defined by how I feel in the world. And I feel a lot because I am autistic. Moreover, my self-inflicted wardrobe restriction was not made because I want to save “decision-making energy.” I wear what I wear because I want to minimize the occasion of the all-day duress and distress I feel when I wear something that is painful. I choose to wear sensible shoes because I’m hyper-flexible and heels are a literal health risk. I only wear blue clothes because they have a calming effect on me, and I am very easily overwhelmed in public spaces. It’s a solution and I like it.
It has been an unfortunate fact my entire life that the way I look makes many people angry and compels even more people to openly mock and deride my appearance. When I was a young woman this wounded me greatly, and I assumed the pain I felt would be a permanent fixture of my life. But with age and other unfolding maturations I am now able to comfortably live in the chosen comfort cocoon I call my clothes. I would highly recommend you try it yourself, or at the very least allow others to wear whatever the hell they want for whatever reasons they choose. Even the rich men who think they’re interesting.
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