Own Clothes Day

Today the sky is striped baby blue and the palest apricot. There are the shadows of two pigeons high in the tree outside, as still as paper cut-outs. Three other birds fly in a swag in order of size - large to small. There’s some cheeping from the blue-tits and a bird sound I can’t place like a soft football rattle in the distance.

Sending out a work email, I’m hooked by a youtube video called ‘The Ten Item Wardrobe’.* I’m letting go this year, so although it seems superficial, how about letting go of excess clothes? There seem to be a lot of these videos of young American women discovering that you don’t need a walk-in wardrobe plus an extra one in the loft. You can let go of anything you don’t wear or doesn’t go with anything else you own, and then it’s easier to decide what to wear. And when you have fewer clothes you tend to gravitate towards better quality and maintenance. The young woman who gives this talk is beautifully turned out, elegantly straight, put together. 

There’s something about this that is catching at me. Of course it’s better to have only the clothes you need. And it makes sense to have them all go with each other. For them to be curated. And for the quality of your wardrobe to be a reflection of the needs of the earth and respect for your own body.

For me the problem with this is that I haven’t been able to decide how I want to be seen in the world. 

I’m pushing through the door to Lower Fifth M. It’s morning break time and while I’ve been in the loo everyone has gone out into the playground in their own clothes. This is the one uniform-free day of the year and I don’t want anyone to see what I’m wearing. 

The school uniform was designed by someone who would never have to wear it. It was a throwback to the days of white gloves and chaperones - grey kilt, grey socks, maroon blazer and maroon corduroy beret maroon corduroy beret only available at Dickens and Jones. 

There was a repeating motif in assemblies of chastising pupils who had been seen in various parts of London without their beret. I was called to the Head Mistress’s office once at about fourteen, having been seen without mine and was required to explain that it had blown off my head as I stood on the open platform of a Routemaster bus. I was supposed to buy another before the next day. As if I had the power to make that happen. 

I remember urgently shopping with my mother the day before own clothes day in Barker’s Kensington High Street. It’s changed now but at the time it was one of those grand department stores where there was lots of open floor for you to cross as the severe shop assistants eyed you up and found you wanting. 

The equation in my mind was something like: I have to wear something grown-up. But I can’t buy anything unless my mother agrees to spend money on it, so something modest that I will wear again and could go with the clothes I already have. In the sale. I was aiming for the look I had seen on Anna, the daughter of a Scandinavian diplomat, and what I saw her wearing when I caught sight of her with her parents one weekend. A calf-length pleated white skirt, fitted white mohair jumper, thin belt outside the jumper, knee boots and thin jewellery. The international Abba style. 

Something like this

https://www.1stdibs.com/fashion/clothing/skirts/

1970s-classic-celine-cream-blue-tartan-pleated-skirt/id-v_10812912/

For the first time in my life I didn’t just go along with what my mother wanted for me, I insisted. Neither of us knew that we should have been looking in the loud American jeans shop across the road.

Inside, the form room looks odd. The rows of wooden desks are aligned in the horizontal rather than the vertical as they are in my classroom - Lower Fifth L. When I got to school that morning everyone else was comfortable in their weekend jeans, shirts and Gant jumpers, looking straight out of a sailing holiday advert, Anna included. I just want to be hidden in any empty room I can find so no one would see me and my shame.

But there’s someone in there, a girl of my age in school uniform who I don’t know, getting something from a lift-top desk. I wonder if she too is hiding. She looks at me curiously.

‘Why are you breathing like that?’

I notice that for the last minute or two I haven’t been able to breathe deeply enough to satisfy my need for oxygen. It’s an odd experience, like the breathing after crying. My body isn’t under my control.

‘I don’t’ gasp ‘know’ gasp. ‘I’ll just sit down' gasp 'if that’s' gasp 'ok.’ There is a separation about it - my body is gasping for air and my mind is watching and thinking but there’s no reason for this. I thought this must be asthma. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a panic attack until a decade later. In other words, to put it in English understatement, what I wear is a bit of an issue for me. 

Here is the confusion that I experience around deciding what is the right style for me. Should I go for the style that fits in (assuming that one day I would work out what that was), or the one that fully expresses the inner me? 

I avoided the question by wearing comfortable but clean, unobtrusive clothes, thereby actually wearing the uniform of 'person who rejects social pressure to look after themselves'. Everyone could see that's what I was doing except of course me, who went through much of my life believing I had successfully opted out of the whole conflicted business. 

Until I became the boss. Then I went into an experimental phase, trying on potential clothing styles a week at a time, until my colleagues started feeling the need to explain my clothing choices to third parties in my presence. 

When I am wearing what is socially appropriate I simply don’t feel myself. I feel constricted, boxed in, boring. I want to act a bit wild, wear something I made myself or let my hair loose just to show everyone I am not this sardine crammed in a tin of identical sardines. In other words, I am taking my unique nature so seriously that I am rejecting the uniform of the social group I am part of.

I have for many years had a hobby of making coats. The idea is to express who I really am through the appearance of the coat. Each one is different, but there are common themes. For a while I thought I could divine my true values, my definition of beauty, by what these coats had in common. For a few years I was making coats that expressed how our outer appearance and our inner experience are so different. The colours I use are very personal, each one with its own feeling, its one symbolic message of what's inside. It’s a bit of an obsession of mine, you might say. 

But as I have grown older I have gradually noticed, with some chagrin**, that despite all the times I have tried to separate myself from my subculture, at least internally, that hasn’t in fact been possible. I find myself drawn to the same things that middle-aged middle-class white women want to do all over the country. I am made of my culture the way a fish is made of the water of the river. We can’t be anything else. 

And however trivial it undoubtedly is, I don’t seem to be able to reconcile these two truths about myself when it comes to what I am going to wear on any particular day. It’s a waste of time and effort when there are so many actually important things to do.

So the question I have today from the point of view of letting go is: what would it be like to let go of ‘what is authentic to me’ or 'what other people expect me to wear' and simply wear what fits, suits my body and is well maintained? What if I stop taking such a thing so absurdly seriously and wear what works for the things I’m going to be doing today?

I wonder how many wardrobe items that will need. Not many, I suspect.

 *(In the case of this particular TED talk the ten items are the core wardrobe of good quality items that are intended to last for years and don’t include anything but shirts bottoms and dresses. Jackets, under layers, jumpers, coats, belts and shoes are all extra). 

**One of the anagrams of my name is sorriest chagrin.