The Real Reason You Have Nothing To Wear
We’ve all been there. The moment you go to get dressed for the day feeling optimistic that you will end up with a great outfit…and before you know it 20 minutes have passed and you’ve smothered your bed in various items of clothing. Why? Because obviously, you have nothing to wear! Of course, the mere fact that you are able to cover your bed in countless garments suggests that there is certainly something that you can wear. So, why can getting dressed make us feel so hopeless?
There are many reasons why someone may become frustrated while getting ready for their day. Perhaps they woke up too late, or perfectly on time, and still, they’re behind schedule. Some find getting dressed a pain if they suffer from dysphoria or dysmorphia (or both.) Maybe you’ve recently lost or gained some weight and a lot of your clothes no longer fit. Whatever the reason, getting dressed can become a daunting process.
No one needs me to remind them of this, but we live in a society where we make thousands of choices per day. Some are little and some can be big, but all of them use our brainpower. In order to help our wellness, we have to aid ourselves by making some choices a little bit easier, such as eating the same thing for breakfast every morning or having a favourite playlist for work. When we simplify things for ourselves, often with routine, we can focus on the stuff that really matters.
This is the real reason you have nothing to wear: you have too much choice. Fashion trends have existed for centuries, usually with royalty or celebrities setting these trends helping the general population choose what they should be wearing and how. The difference between historical fashion trends and those of today is their life span (the fashion trend cycle.) The fashion trend cycle has been getting shorter and shorter over the last few years, and it is now at a point where we could see it disappear completely. The rapid growth of social media has placed a spotlight on the many fashion trends from around the globe, bringing people into the fashion world from the comforts of their sofa. We can browse and shop from our favourite brands online and we have an urge to overconsume. Fashion trends are going just as quickly as they came, and we all buy into them. Once we’ve caught onto one trend it's already starting to die out and so we look to the next thing and forget about the items we bought from the previous trends, slowly filling up our wardrobes with garments like some fashionable graveyard. This is how we end up with enough clothing to engulf our bedrooms. However, because we buy into the trends which may or may not actually be something we truly love, we don’t identify with these items.
The secret to having a coherent wardrobe that doesn’t overwhelm us every day is investing in timeless basics that can be worn in myriad ways with other items we own. If you have a good closet clear out you may realise that you already own some excellent basics, you just didn’t notice because they were hidden under all sorts!
One of my favourite slow fashion and fashion-conscious content creators Andrea Cheong has a great deal of valuable information online about how to go about doing a wardrobe audit. Here’s an Instagram post with some opening tips:
Figuring out what it is that you do have to wear does take some time and effort, but simplifying your wardrobe will leave you with far less choice at the beginning of your day, allowing you to focus on what truly matters to you.
