How To Choose What To Wear

How To With Shenai Chan (II)

In the throes of engineering school, waking up and taking the bus to campus to sit in the lab for hours upon hours, thinking of nothing but how removed from my body I could be, how deep in the maze of some prickly program or circuit I could immerse myself—I did not think very hard about what I was wearing and why. Same white Fila sneakers every day, same black Hanes socks off of Amazon, minor variations on a t-shirt and stretchy pants, and if it was cold, which it usually was, my one good Gore-Tex coat, or the hand-me-down slightly-too-small leather jacket I inherited from my late great-aunt.

The leather jacket was somewhat of an aberration: it was much nicer than almost everything else I owned, the leather so much softer, smoother, and more supple than any leather I had ever encountered. It was vintage Abercrombie & Fitch, the tag not some flimsy synthetic fabric flapping out from the collar, but a meticulously embroidered black patch, stitched in jewel toned greens and reds. I did not take very good care of it—Pittsburgh is one of the rainiest cities in America, and more often than not I trotted around campus and the neighborhood surrounding my townhouse exposing the leather to light drizzle and fog, when I was too lazy to pull out the umbrella I carried with me religiously. The jacket was too small to fully zip up comfortably, so I always wore it open, over some graphic band tee, or, when I was feeling particularly indulgent, over a deep blue cashmere sweater I had also inherited from that great-aunt.

On the first day of a class on weaving I took my senior spring (and then dropped after three weeks after realizing how insanely time consuming weaving is), the professor had us pair up and share with one another the favorite textile we owned, and then had us go in a circle and share our partner’s favorite textile. I confided in Elise, the person sitting next to me, that I loved that sweater, with no little anxiety and shame, feelings roiling around surprisingly inside. Elise told the class that my favorite textile was my cashmere sweater, and I hastily added that it had been passed down from my great-aunt. I desperately didn’t want this class of entirely new people to see me as some frivilously wealthy, indulgent person, who had the money to spend on pure cashmere and in fact did spend it on pure cashmere. The torch of sharing continued around the circle, and I sat there in my whirlwind of confusion and embarrassment, the little flame of pride and pleasure at owning such an item flickering, but not dying.

Like a new mother, I carried these items meticulously, but ignorantly, with no idea how to care for them: I couldn’t just throw them in the wash, right? Used to tossing all of my clothes in a single cold wash on permanent press, I was at a loss. I had never gone to a dry cleaner’s before. All of my Sunday best clothing growing up was pretty but cheaply made, cut from rolls of patterened polyester, purchased almost always from Ross or Marshall’s, maybe Old Navy if they had a sale. Clothes were bought because they were a good back-to-school deal; clothes could be flung haphazardly onto the floor and could live there; clothes were surfaces for other content, like records of hard-won math competitions. Clothes could not exist in and of themselves, could not speak for themselves through cut and texture, could not please merely through prolonged contact with a shirtsleeve. And yet: the cashmere, the leather, and the still dim, yet unignorable joy they lit in me. The continual reaching for them despite everything else in my closet that clamored for my attention.

Increasingly I find myself parroting this mantra: if you have to do it every day, it might as well be pleasurable. Dressing, eating, relating, speaking, thinking, reading, moving. Last Monday I packed my suitcase and felt for maybe the first time that I loved every article of clothing in it. The Japanese Breakfast “Savage Good Boy” shirt my ex-friend-roommate bought for my nineteenth birthday; the Phoebe Bridgers tour shirt I bought from the first concert I ever went to; both cropped and de-sleeved with craft scissors. The jewel-toned red, green, and purple sweater, thick and hardy, that you bought for me at the thrift popup by your apartment when I didn’t want to spend money on myself. The ever-softening-in-the-wash denim maxi skirt I wore more often than not this summer in New York. The 100% cotton, almost canvas-textured L.L.Bean mossy green flannel I bought last weekend when I came up to San Francisco in a t-shirt and was rudely awakened by the aggressive July winds: we were on Haight street and I found it in the first vintage shop we passed by, buying it only at your urging, your insistence on my warmth.

It’s still hard to spend money on clothes, hard to spend money on myself. But, in love, I do: the camoflauge hat with the bright yellow accent stitching I bought from the Brooklyn Museum because you bought one too. The little white button-up you took me to buy after driving me to my scoliosis X-ray. Cashmere, leather, cotton. Love to keep me warm.