It’s not about the dress you wear...
...but it’s about the life you lead in the dress - Diana Vreeland
Living out of a suitcase teaches you a lot about life, mainly that you need a hell of a lot less than you think in order to live fabulously. I am now at month 9.5 of living on the road, not to mention I won’t really be settled until summer in the southern hemisphere has been and gone. Some people create human life in this time frame, I’ve created a new fashion philosophy.
Before I get into said new philosophy by sharing my five new rules, let me start by sharing how I got into clothes in the first place.
If you’ve read much by me before you may know that I am from Christchurch. A lovely little city at the bottom of the planet. A perfect place to access nature, experience a short commute to work, eat the best produce every day, go for quaint walks every weekend and make lifelong friends. It’s main downside being it’s a fashion desert.
As much as I appreciate my hometown’s greatest attributes now (as a 31 year old woman who’s spent the majority of her adult life living in major cities) I only ever remember my desperation to leave. In fact I expressed my desire to escape my quaint roots as young as three years old, when, as we were reading Beatrix Potter, I told my mum that I wanted to “live in England one day, not in New Zealand.”
Skip forward ten or so years, the very early days of social media and internet access to the rest of the globe meant I truly knew what was out there. Still feeling destined for a big life in the UK, I was able to use Myspace to gauge what was going on in London; what people were listening to, where they were partying and, most importantly, what they were wearing.
Mimicking what I perceived as the London look gave me as much access to the other side of the world as I could then muster. Not only that, but it enabled me to find my own sense of self and unique style. Clothes would become the through-line of my upcoming trajectory and save me from isolation and boredom by connecting me with my kind of garments and thus my kinds of people.
Skip forward another 10 years and I was living in London, working in fashion, partying like a local and wearing more stylish clothes given the economy of scale plus access to premium secondhand. There I also started dressing more like a pin up, styling myself against Dita Von Teese instead of party girls from the internet, as well as embracing my access to all kinds of lingerie given I was a PR assistant at Agent Provocateur.
I thought that at this point I might have felt I’d made it, style wise and otherwise I was living my dream, but instead my 23 year old self was not happy - she knew she wasn’t on the right path, yet she couldn’t see where that right path was.
Several more years of soul searching led me to writing. Along the way I also had a vintage clothing business. My style - be it based on early internet influencers, modern day pin ups, or any of the other style references I won’t go into now (OK, Cinecittá) - and the vintage clothes that came with it were the thing that threaded my life together, so much so that I’ve now written a book about it (out in November).
But since then I’ve been on an entirely different journey that has had nothing to do with shopping for secondhand gems or bargains (even if picking up little vintage trinkets is my favourite kind of souvenir shopping). Instead life lately has been about cultivating deep love, along with travel and expansion.
Clothes might have previously served as a through-line in my life, but right now, because of recent life changes and my own desire to deepen, I feel better connected to more soulful parts of myself, rather than the parts of me you see on the surface.
With that, here are my five new fashion rules:
Outfit repeating is absolutely fine, in fact I think that in an age still focused on overconsumption it’s aspirational. As I’ve written before, most people, you included, are not pop stars with PR contracts (and if you are a pop star thank you for reading my Substack). There is no logical reason you can’t be seen in the same thing day after day, yes, even on your Instagram stories.
I’m at the point where my capsule closet has been seen on me so much it verges on a uniform. I imagine the people in my life are either used to it or oblivious to it, which is wild to think considering only a year ago I would be donning a new vintage ensemble almost every weekend.
Which brings me to my next point…
Conscious shopping is something many of us claim to do but really don’t. I absolutely considered myself a conscious shopper before my wardrobe was limited to 23kg. Buying 80% of my wardrobe through secondhand outlets and being mindful about most purchases was the upper limit of my previous shopping formula.
I don’t know if you’ve ever given up a food group, stopped drinking for a period of time or quit smoking (I’ve done all three *she says smugly*), but it’s not until you truly stop something that you realise how much you used to do it. Put it this way, I used to shop a lot. With my recent luggage limits and financial priorities (plane tickets have been coming before new pairs of shoes) I’ve really had to think before every single clothing purchase.
Which is to say it’s made me more inventive with what I already have…
New combos of my existing clothing are the silver lining I’ve found to a generally positive cloud. My creative mind has been forced to focus on how to squeeze the most out of what I already have, rather than where to get the next thing to wear.
For example, last night, amidst a freezing cold visit to Melbourne, I took a velvet bodice (which is skimpy, but the textile makes it trans-seasonal), a woollen skirt, a pair of tights, a block heel and a heavy winter coat out to dinner. Previously I would never have thought to combine this mish mosh of a summer staple with an everyday piece. And yet it equalled smart-casual, not to mention gave me another option to pull from in future.
Make up and accessories are also a powerful way to dress things up or down when you’re out of town. I remember reading in Sex and the Single Girl, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 masterpiece which predates Sex and the City and even Cosmo magazine, a section describing a colleague of Helen’s fashion emergency. Helen’s workmate had been invited on a date set for immediately after work, only to find out (baring in mind this was midcentury America) the date was to a black tie ball, and her cocktail gown would not suffice!
Rather than finding something else to wear she went to town on her make up and hair, visiting a salon on her lunch break. By the time she met her beau she looked so glamorous she put everyone else’s floor-length looks to shame.
In the same vein, remember that how you paint you face, style your hair and add or subtract accessories really does impact your overall look. When on the road I’ve been saved by a tube of red lipstick as much as I have by a pair of flat shoes. When your wardrobe is limited you get used to thinking of the other elements of your look and mixing them together to create the most appropriate clothing cocktail possible.
Then again, not caring about clothes is as important as using my ingenuity to create fresh looks with less. Back to the original message of this newsletter, and it’s proactive title (risky for an author who’s about to release a style guide), I no longer let a less-than-ideal outfits sway my evening.
In the past, if I was distinctly over or under dressed (more so the latter) it had the power to sway my mood so drastically that it could make or break the night. Now, whilst it does feel a tad rubbish to be casually dressed in a room of dolled up party guests (more so when you know you have the perfect thing to wear hanging in your wardrobe), I no longer let it get me down. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss, but really it doesn’t matter. What matters most is the event itself; connecting with other people, the environment you’re in and enjoying the fruits of the host’s labour.
All of this is to say clothes (especially of the vintage variety) still make my heart sing. It’s just now my priorities are different. For me, right now, my words and my craft come first. Becoming the most brilliant and successful writer I can be, whilst continuing to grow and expand, is my goal. Meanwhile true love is now what threads my life together.
In the words of the late, great American Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland, “It’s not about the dress you wear, but it’s about the life you lead in the dress.”