On Personal Uniforms
“I’m not really interested in clothes, for me personally I mean. I never buy them. You know, the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank had forty identical grey flannel suits in his closet: I always thought that was the height of modesty and extravagance at the same time. I love that.”
(Rick Owens in conversation with Vestoj)
I remember talking to my brother about fashion theory years ago, and him catching me off guard by saying “You’re lucky”. I asked him what he meant, and he said I was lucky because I had found something in my life that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I loved. To be honest, that threw me, because I was severely unwell at the time and felt the furthest thing from lucky. I doubt he would even remember that conversation, but it is something I have held onto ever since because it shifted my perspective for the better.
No matter how bad my health has been or how difficult my life has gotten, I have been lucky, because I have this field that I love and it has helped prevent me from losing myself. When I have lost interest in everything else, here is something that is guaranteed to get me thinking again.
I am a bit of an unusual fashion blogger, in that I do not enjoy buying clothes for myself, I do not dress particularly well, and yet fashion and dress are almost always on my mind. They are one of the main avenues through which I frame my understanding of human behaviour and identity. There is a power in knowing what we like, because it contributes to our understanding of who we are. Where fashion is concerned, there is a comfort for me in knowing that I have found this small, but important, puzzle piece that forms part of who I am.
The reality is that we can spend a lifetime trying to understand who we are. Indeed, mystics have done exactly that over the course of human history in pursuit of transcendence. I am reminded of the saying - to know one’s self is to know God. I am sure that I am not alone in loving hear people talk about things they have knowledge of and are truly excited by. Their energy can be infectious and thus make me interested in something I may have not cared about before. It is not the topic, it is the person.
We respond to their love, and in sharing with us an insight into something personal and meaningful to them, we can come to understand each other and ourselves on a level that may have been inaccessible before. I think there is always something attractive about people sharing a part of themselves, because humans are social creatures and so we naturally respond to that sense of connection.
When I speak of “part of themselves”, I do not mean in terms of intimate secrets or some sense of authentic self they keep hidden away from the world (although of course that can definitely be the case in close relationships). However, for the purpose of this post, I think that in sharing what we love, our creativity, our stories, our imagination, our dreams, we share part of who we are and so seek to foster connections with others.
The real question to my mind is one of interpretation. There is an arguably unbridgeable gap between what we think we are saying and what others understand us to be saying. This is especially the case where creativity is concerned. But then, I think it goes beyond sharing any singular statement, because we respond to human experience and emotions. If a painting can make me feel something, then the artist has communicated something. Words always seem rather limiting, after all, body language and vocal tone communicate just as much as, if not more than, words.
Dress can feel at once more blunt and more eloquent than language. Regardless of the gulf between what we think our clothing says about us and what others “read” of our outfit, dress can still in certain instances serve as a bold political statement or be used as a form of resistance. Fashion does not exist in a vacuum, and so everything from time to culture to setting to body can influence how that outfit is understood.
But I think we have all experienced knowing someone whose sense of style seems so perfectly them. You can spot something in a runway collection or on the street and it reminds you instantly of that person. Clothes can speak of the wearer even in their absence, and I am fascinated by how we can have such strong associations in our minds between clothing and people.
This can be from a singular item, say Indiana Jones’ hat; an aesthetic style, say someone we know who wears anything with Hedi Slimane’s vibe; a colour, say someone who always wears black; or any number of quantifiable indicators. When people watching I love trying to imagine what the rest of someone’s wardrobe looks like, and whether it is much of the same or a number of exciting random tangents.
One of my favourite ways to think of the wardrobe is thanks to Saulo B. Cwerner, who wrote of it as a “pool of identity tokens” and where “the multiplicity of contemporary identity unfolds”. I quote this far too often, but it is worth it. Dress forms our social skin and is part of how others perceive us (barring people who are nervous when giving a speech and imagining us naked, or otherwise have more personal reasons to imagine us nude!), and so it seems like one of the very forefronts of impression management and identity formation.
What does someone’s wardrobe tell you about them? Can you make any accurate assessment about who a person is from the clothes they wear? What if they choose to wear the same thing each and every day? I have long loved the idea of personal uniforms, because there is something luxurious and confident about them. Much has been written about all these tech billionaires who wear the same thing every day because they are trying to eliminate decision fatigue, and that always feels a little hollow to me. To my mind it is about personal branding more than anything else. They have more reason than most to impression manage, much like politicians these days who forgo a tie and roll up their sleeves to seem more like “normal” hardworking people.
When I speak of personal uniforms I do not necessarily mean wearing the same thing every day. I think of it in the wider sense of someone having a recognisable style, and clearly sticking to what they like. I always enjoy seeing what fashion designers wear when taking their bow at the end of their fashion shows, because for many you are essentially seeing their work uniform. I am intrigued by the fact that my favourite designers all seem to have some sense of personal uniform, invariably composed of clothing from their own brand, and usually on the more subtle end of the scale.
Whether it is Rick wearing the same outfit every day for a few seasons or Dries wearing variations on a theme, it is the same with Yohji, Ann and Rei (although Rei does often mix things up) - the clothes feel practical for their lifestyles and there seems to be little variation except gradually over time. Of course you have examples like Karl Lagerfeld, but that always felt far too forced to me. There seems to be a fine line somewhere between feeling natural and feeling forced, but it is difficult to explain where that line lies. I assume we all interpret it differently.
There is a luxury in being able to wear the same, or similar, thing each day, because you necessarily lead a life where you are able to do that. But it also strikes me as confident because it suggests you know yourself well enough to know what you like and are able to stick to it. While laziness or indifference could also be at play, I think it is usually quite apparent when someone has a uniform that feels like them and works well, or whether they just look sloppy and indifferent in their choices.
When it comes to my personal wardrobe, the obvious conscious choice for the past decade has been the colour black. I wear black each and every day. There is something of a paradox in how it operates and why I wear it. For those that know me well, they see me wearing black every day, so they end up seeing me and not the clothes. For strangers, well, a six foot bearded brown guy dressed in all black tends to stand out and I often enjoy the luxury of having store security guards follow me around whichever shop I happen to walk into. But regardless of the context or implications, black is what I feel comfortable wearing, and it is what helps me feel most like me.
I have however been slowly trying to narrow down my personal uniform further. I already own as few clothes as possible, not because I am a minimalist, but rather from an essentialist perspective. I dislike the idea of owning vastly more than I need. Having said that, I love the idea of having ten of the same t-shirt rather than ten different t-shirts. I dislike buying clothes for myself, and so I enjoy the simplicity and confidence of a personal wardrobe - it seems like a natural marriage. I always leave room for spontaneity and “fun” pieces, but for the most part I like the idea of finding what I like and sticking to it for a few seasons.
For me there is a sense of stability tied to it that I yearn for. I have an autoimmune disease that means my body weight frequently drops and I can often feel like a prisoner in my own body. I am also dealing with anxiety and depression, meaning that sometimes I can even feel like a prisoner in my own mind. But through these clothes I can feel like I have an anchor tying me to a sense of who I am, just like I hold onto that puzzle piece of being someone who loves fashion and dress.
Oddly enough, I do not invest much emotional attachment to my clothing. It is the idea of the uniform, not the specific manifestation of it, that is important to me. For a number of years I wanted to make sure I was breaking any sense of attachment by selling or donating my favourite piece of clothing each year to prove to myself that I could. It was a lesson in impermanence. Of course I still have a favourite pair of trousers or favourite sweater, but the idea is to now have a wardrobe full of favourites, without feeling tied down by them - they are identity tokens, not identity itself, and to think otherwise is dangerous to my mind.
Having dealt with health issues for the majority of my life, I am used to my plans being torn apart and having the rug pulled out from under you with zero warning. You are forced to learn to let go if you want to keep your sanity. I pick the direction I want to head in and deal with the twists and turns as they arise. It is easier to focus on your next step than to look at the top of the mountain and feel overwhelmed before taking your first step. And it is much the same with clothes, in that I have an idea in my head, and the pieces in and of themselves are transitory.
Clothes inevitably wear out, stop fitting, or otherwise stop being part of your wardrobe, and I guess I try to appreciate them as much as possible while I have them, without getting too attached. Everything changes, and the wardrobe is no different, but I like to think of it as an ongoing process of refinement.
So yes, as much as I dislike shopping for clothes for my own wardrobe, I have been spending more and more time trying to find pieces that I can use to create a personal uniform and which fit the criteria of clothes I love to wear and that help me feel like me. It has been an exploration of self and a reminder that there is a power in knowing what you like.
xxxx
