Fashion With No Future

Is it nihilistic to love clothes?

In my worst moments, and some of my best, I see no future for myself. I’ll spare you the personal and political reasons as to why that is, for I suspect a cool 98% of you have analogous experiences on a daily basis, but what I’m interested in is the idea of fashion as a nihilistic practice.

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Clothing is, by nature of cyclical climates, inherently seasonal, and we have exaggerated that seasonality with the advent of the contemporary fashion world. Clothes are, in this moment, near-completely divorced from any conception of “objectivity” or “truth”—the decentralization of fashion media, courtesy of globalization via the internet, has shaken up boring, fascist-leaning, white supremacist hegemonies of style by allowing more trends to “trickle up” from the masses into the IV drip of the mainstream, which I think most of us would agree is a good thing. Androgyny, the blurring of lines between formal and casual wear, and a societal distancing from “flattering” as the ultimate metric of style have all contributed to the best aspects of our current society—acceptance, inclusivity, and a sense of humor that didn’t exactly flow freely in the era of, say, Coco Chanel’s rigid (Nazi-loving) suit sets.

However, the flip side of that happy expansiveness is a great unmooring. Divested of its artificial, constructed strictures, we can no longer pretend fashion is connected to some godly pulse that sanctifies our roles as Man and Woman, Wealthy and Impoverished, even just In the Home or On the Town. I suspect this is why “culturally conservative” people cling to ultimately random aesthetic constrictions: because they don’t think they can handle the inevitable plummet into the abyss of arbitrariness.

Honestly, neither do I. In this futurelessness that has plagued my life since, at the latest, my college graduation, I’ve had bouts of terrifying hopelessness, treated my body in ways I’m scared to see the repercussions of down the line, and at one point, gone into debt in the name of the fashion world I so desperately wanted to be a part of—not because I wanted to “fit in” or impress people, but because I saw fashion as an art form that just so happened to cost a bit more than sketching or watercolors. I didn’t feel compulsion or peer pressure or even deep desire when I made these choices: I felt light as a ghost, tipping gently into an arid chasm of dollars gone. What in the world could I be saving them for? I’ll never have enough money to live in the way that I want to live, so every fashion-based decision feels as natural as blinking. No investment on shoes could be more idiotic than my investment into a fine arts degree, so shame and fear are beside the point.

I have not been economically able to stay in the places I’ve wanted to stay, so my wardrobe feels even more like a non-place: items flow out as easily as they flow in, gifted without a second thought, sold for far less than they’re worth, and in my lesser moments, left on the side of a curb as a feeble gesture toward “generosity.” A $300 in a shopping bag on a curb. I hope someone worthy found it before it got compressed into a hill of garbage. I doubt it.

Janelle Abbott’s “More Clothes Manifesto” notes that reckoning with the grotesque count of 100 billion garments produced annually requires a form of radical acceptance that is conducive to accumulating secondhand clothing in a way that easily can veer into hoarding, a practice that I feel is deeply rooted in the denial of the essence of clothing: designed to be changed, literally and figuratively. Can building yourself a nest of fabric make fashion feel more substantial? If you know you’ll live with a piece forever, what will feel different when you hold it in your hands?

The only way I’ve found to imbue my clothes with a meaning that tethers them to some kind of ontological weight, like, they exist and that means something, is to receive them from, or be unable to separate them from, loved ones. I received a simple necklace from my grandmother, a thing gold chain with two chain links intertwined, that she has a copy of, and we both wear ours every single day. I still have (and use daily) the backpack I bought 15 years ago that was the only thing not stolen on an ill-fated trip to Rome with my then-best friend’s family. I wore a velvet gown a friend bought me to my senior prom, and I believe it’s still somewhere in my childhood home. Most recently, my incredible friend Erin sent me a care package including nail polish embedded with flecks of “dust,” three FRUiTS magazines (I’ve never owned a physical copy before, stickers, and four vintage garments, which I’ll share below, each of which fits me so perfectly I wondered if Erin somehow had a 3D scan of my body in their possession.

Zip-up, checkered velvet top by “Laundry by Shelli Segal”

Stretchy, feathered tank by “XOXO”

Tank top by “Ell Jay”

Matching jacket by same.

So it is, as always, our connections and conversations and reflections in other people that allows clothing to reach anything resembling meaning. I’m not surprised, but I am verklempt.

Thanks for reading!

<3 ESK