Tuesday 2 December 2014

Wardrobe Planning I: In which I talk about the reason I am interested in planning my wardrobe

Counter-intuitively, while mostly confined to my sofa in PJs due to illness, I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks revisiting some of my thoughts about wardrobe planning. I will probably write a few posts on the topic, so, you know, fair warning, feel free to skip past etc. etc. Today, though, I'll just give a bit of background on why I am writing about it at all.

I became interested in wardrobe planning specifically more or less at the same time as I started sewing. This interest was really born of a lot of frustration and the desire to Be Better At Getting Dressed. I go round and round the feminist and moral implications of worrying about whether I am good at wearing clothes (mostly, these implications are not good), but the fact is, no matter those moral implications, I don't consider it to be among my major talents and have long felt I needed to work on it. As I've grown older, I think I've become less confident, through increasing cynicism and experience, that the sheer force of my winning (!) personality and excellent ideas will carry the day at work even if I am badly or inappropriately dressed when I present them. The problem is therefore that I've been forced to try to figure out, rather belatedly, what dressing well and appropriately means for me personally and what I'm prepared to do about it.

"What do you mean you don't want a tunic with butterflies on it? Isn't that what EVERY fat woman wants to wear?" -- Clothing buyers at everywhere I shopped in 2005, apparently. This actual tunic is from Evans' CURRENT range, alas.
 The defining moment for me when I decided that Clothes Really Are Difficult was back in the mid-2000s when I was in my late 20s. At that time I wore a UK size 24/26 (about a US 22/24) and had a corporate job. These were not particularly compatible facts. My experience was that were relatively few places to buy affordable, good quality, attractive clothes for an office based career that fit. Anything that was in my size and suitable for corporate wear cost the earth and was often more suited to women 20 years older than me. I think things have changed a bit in the last decade (and I'm a decade older than I was then, of course, so perhaps my perceptions of the clothes options would have changed). However, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that younger, professional plus size women still struggle to build a decent quality age-appropriate work wardrobe on a budget, and instead were still trawling through racks of tunics with butterfly prints looking for something more professional.

Even before I was a plus-sized grown-up with a clothes budget, though, I was a plus-sized (mostly UK 16-20) and taller-than-average teen and university student. Even when all I was buying was school uniform and then the de facto student uniform of jeans-and-a-sweater, my choices always seemed very limited. My fall back clothes-buying strategy was buy anything that fit and was at least in a colour I liked and a price point I could stand, bearing in mind that this often didn't leave many choices (not helped by the fact that I am a cheapskate thrifty and probably did budget less than I needed to for clothes at that time). The questions of whether I liked the thing I was buying, wanted to wear it, could imagine an outfit that included it, etc etc were pretty much pointless to contemplate, since the actual choice was: this top, or no top at all. These trousers, or no trousers at all. Not a great set of choices unless you enjoy public indecency charges.

For the most part, at that time, I decided that since clothes and fashion were not interested in ME, I would eschew all interest in clothes or fashion. I don't think this was necessarily a bad thing, I should add, and I am not breaking my heart over my fashion-less teens and twenties. It also wasn't self-consciously virtuous (in that "I am above these worldly concerns!" sort of way). I just... didn't really commit much mental energy to it, except at a few specific moments e.g. prior to a special event, which would cause frantic activity and, inevitably, despair.

However, ultimately, when I hit a certain level of seniority in my job, my clothing situation resulted in several encounters with a particularly appalling boss who lectured me, in these very words, for being "fat, ugly and badly dressed". (To give you an impression of how toxic this situation/workplace was: the boss' job title was VP of Human Resources. This was not a good period of my life. I wouldn't even swap it for my current PJs/sofa/chronic illness situation.)


The garibaldi biscuit, a.k.a. my comfort eating food of choice
 To be frank, I was fat, and I probably was badly dressed. (Ugly is too subjective to comment, though her actual problem was that I wouldn't (and still won't) wear make-up due to epic skin allergies, which was presumably supposed to hide the ugliness.) There is, if I'm honest, a part of me now that cringes horribly at how I presented myself, clothes-wise, at that time. However, I am never ever going to think that that boss' approach to talking to me about those issues was good or right, and it really didn't help me at all. (Nor was her constant fat-shaming in any way productive, since every time she told me I was disgusting and fat I would tend to go home and comfort eat an entire packet of Garibaldi biscuits.) With increasing levels of desperation and loathing of the shopping experience, I continued to acquire clothes I didn't really like in an attempt to improve my wardrobe (there was one olive green suit in particular that sticks in my mind horribly). Mostly, however, I defaulted more and more to the most basic, safe corporate uniform of black trousers and a white blouse.

Subsequently, once I had left the job with the terrible boss, I lost weight and dropped down to a much more well-served, mainstream size (about a UK 14/16 or US 10/12). Once I got over the shock of being able to walk into most high street shops and find something in my size, I was mainly sad to discover that being thinner did not have the magical fashion results so widely touted by the weight-loss industrial complex. I didn't enjoy clothes shopping any better, couldn't find well-fitting clothes on the rails (alas, no matter what my weight I will always ultimately be forced to consider my proportionally enormous bust first) and continued to experience the woe of standing in front of a stuffed wardrobe and wailing that I had nothing to wear. Overall, I bought a lot more clothes, and while I probably did achieve a marginally higher standard of presentation, it was all still very hit and miss. For all it was easier to find clothes in my size, it was somehow no easier to actually find clothes I wanted to wear. The only respite from this was when I started my PhD and my whole wardrobe devolved back to student standard jeans and t-shirts/sweaters on class days and yoga pants and t-shirts/sweaters on days when I was working at home.

My actual pre and post wardrobe purge photos from 2012
Enter the decision to start sewing garments a couple of years ago. At about this time, two other wardrobe related things happened: I knew I was going to be going out to work again and needed to upgrade from student wear; and I also started to get really itchy about how many clothes I owned and the associated facts that (a) I didn't like very many of the things I owned; (b) I didn't wear very many of them but just had the same few things I did like in near constant rotation. I did a HUGE wardrobe purge, and decided to start to rebuild with a plan, which has gone through multiple iterations ever since.

The question of what I want to own has turned out to be a much more complicated question than I anticipated, because the thing with sewing is that in theory at least, you can have anything, or nearly anything. Once I started to feel like I had free choice, rather than just being stymied by hating everything that is available to buy, I had to ask myself how I actually wanted to dress. No more "this top, or no top at all" but "any top at all that you can imagine". Somehow, this is far more work than I ever expected. It is liberating not to be limited to what is in the shops, but it is time-consuming to think about what you would like instead. "This top or no top at all" is a much faster, if less enjoyable, decision. It was evident to me from the start that sewing would be a much bigger time investment than any previous clothing acquisition strategy I have employed, not just because I have to MAKE something instead of clicking a "Buy It Now!" button. My conclusion was that having a concrete plan/set of plans would be the best way forward.

In the next post I will talk a bit more about the evolution of my wardrobe plan and how sewing fits in. (ETA: You can read Part II here.)

12 comments:

  1. I really appreciate the clarity you bring to the nexus of body image, personal style, social expectations, creativity, and sewing. Finding your own way through these matters takes a lot of thought, attention, and sometimes experimentation, but I believe it provides great rewards in satisfaction, confidence, and a more grounded sense of self. Plus the sewing can be more satisfying in the end. I look forward to your further musings on this topic!

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    1. Very well said, imaginalpractices. I've recently had many thoughts about body image, how I dress, and if I dress femininely enough or for my age. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I also look forward to reading more.

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    2. Thanks! Glad you enjoyed my post.

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    3. L, that whole thing with femininity and age is SUCH a hot topic for me right now (I turn 40 in 2015, and I guess any looming birthday with a 0 at the end is bound to prompt some specific thoughts on that topic.).

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  2. Such great writing!!

    I spent years in HR and how insane to read that she spoke to you that way!!! Sheesh!

    I spent my teens and early 20s as a size 2 with body image issues. My body was "weird" and I didn't like it. By age 25 I was a size 14/16. But I was much more confident with myself by that age. Clothes shopping for s vacation was my tipping point. And in 2 years I was back to a 6/8.

    Clothes shopping was JUST as hard!!!!! My plus sized friends did not believe me! Yes I know that there are more places to buy size 6/8, but my individual experience did not improve a bit. Hmmph. If only I had discovered sewing sooner. Whine ;)

    Can't wait to read more and see more plans. I love plans!

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    1. Thanks!

      That boss was SOMETHING ELSE, seriously. Looking back, I can't understand what I was thinking letting her trample all over me like that, but at the time it was just so hard to see the big picture of what was happening. On the plus side, karma eventually snapped back and smacked her in the face: she got demoted out of any job with people management responsibilities when someone realized she couldn't keep a member of staff for more than 12 months and started to ask those of us who were still around in the company what on earth was going on.

      I really wish I'd started sewing sooner too! However, in your case at least you are making up for any lost time in sheer speed and awesomeness! :D

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  3. I'm in a similar head space. I just don't want all of the stuff but I still want to look "nice" (whatever that means..to me...at this particular moment in time). Looking forward to your next post.

    FYI: Your previous boss sucked!

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    1. She DID suck, omg. Worst boss ever.

      The whole stuff/looking nice balance is so hard to strike, isn't it?

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  4. I felt like I was reading journal entries written by me with your post...Right down to the verbally abusive boss who sent me running for a bag of chocolates. I've been every size from a RTW US 10 to a 22 over the past 10 years, and it may have been *more* frustrating to shop for clothes as a size 10 because at least then, I thought that things *should* fit. And I've also been there on being stuck buying something just because "it sort of fits" rather than because I actually liked it.

    Lack of clothing options for my giant bust also played a huge part in why I started sewing. Little did I know that sewing patterns weren't much better than RTW when it comes to having a full bust, but at least we can do something about a sewing pattern via alterations.

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    1. I remember how incredibly disappointed I was the first times I went shopping when I hit my 'goal weight' back in the day. I am not normally so credulous but somehow I'd fallen hook line and sinker for that weight loss myth that suddenly I was going to be able to just buy stuff! And look amazing! So it was, I agree, actually worse than when I knew there were only 2 shops in the ENTIRE ENORMOUS SHOPPING MALL that stocked my size, both of them specialist plus-size, and those were my choices, because now I had to trawl hopelessly through what felt like 200 different shops and STILL I had so few choices. So much more effort, yet not really any more reward.

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  5. Great post, and like imaginalpractices said, written with great clarity. So much of what you wrote resonated with me. I'm still early on in my sewing adventure, but love that it brings a joy to clothing that I never experienced before. I look forward to reading about the evolution of your plan.

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    1. Thank you! I definitely agree about how much I enjoy clothes now that I'm sewing compared to when I was buying. It's gone from a horrible chore to a very enjoyable hobby.

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