if you want to dress better, stop thinking about it

and just ~enjoy the fruitfulness of life~

on wednesday night my friend ellen and i were walking on canal street after dinner, we were bracing the frigid wind while slightly plump with warmth from the two glasses of red wine we drank and the cigarettes we were smoking (if my family is reading this, the last part is fiction! and i was wearing a hat and scarf i swear). to distract ourselves from the cold we were talking about about pieces of art we’ve historically loved which other people never thought twice about and how that bleeds into the modicums that congeal into personal taste (more on this soon…). as we were exchanging examples i noticed that all of them were rooted in privacy. i shared that one of my favorite movies in the world that i think about all the time is palo alto directed by gia coppola, when i first watched it in 2014 i had no outlet to share my thoughts or opportunity to be influenced by others. i just simply liked it and kept it in my metaphorical back pocket, my opinion nestled smooth within my brain with no one else’s fingers in it.

some of the best advice i’ve been given is to pay attention to how you feel when you’re around certain friends, i think the same can be said for noticing how you feel when you get dressed or consume art. those who know or read me have heard my poetic waxing about how i want to think about myself less this year (hope this doesn’t sound moralistic because how well i’ve executing this is debatable.. but that’s neither here nor there!) and my conversation on canal street made me realize that i also want to stop thinking about how i dress. it comes to no surprise that our reliance on our phones has led to an excessive amount of introspective thinking. how we live used to dictate how we posted and now how we post dictates how we live- and especially how we dress (this is an obvious take, i am aware). a part of me felt a wave of relief after the (brief) tik tok ban, the excessive churn of regurgitated takes on fashion and music and food and every else in-between would finally be put to an end and maybe we would all finally begin to form our own opinions. sure, this is a overly romantic and rosy perspective because something even more sinister will slide into its place, yet my optimism remains. we have to start thinking of ourselves as opportunities to create a shiny, dynamic, beautifully original existence as opposed to carbon copies who scroll instead of reaching through to find their own identity. i want to be clear that liking something that is popular is NOT BAD nor is feeling inspired by something bad. things are popular for a good reason, but what is critical is taking a step back to understand why you like something, what that says about your personality and how that knowledge can help you find more things that feel like you.

lately, i’ve been considering my closet in the context of how i imagine i would describe it in the future. in fifty years i really hope my grandkids remember my vintage lady jackets and worn-in mary janes and the red socks i always wear and my beloved mini skirts, not a cheap dupe found through a tik tok shop. when i look back on cycles of my wardrobe it feels as if they were worn by different dolls meant to fit a carefully constructed prototype to be tested and observed. emily goes to college, emily goes to the office, emily goes to europe, emily goes to new york. there are only a few pieces within the rubble of these mattelian creations that remain despite the excessive amount of thought that went into them. a huge part of this issue is simply just being in your early twenties, a lesson of self-schism that cannot be reflected upon fully until one has army crawled out of the hole; however, i find this lack of unique sartorial personality is only getting worse as our algorithms become narrower.

my advice is to take a step back from both your closet and your phone, try to erase the perception of others from your decision making and just simply enjoy the things that you like (easier said than done but good things aren’t always easy). the things you let into your life should feel magnetic and referential… which is such a gift!!!!!! what you wear, how your apartment looks, the inside of your bag etc. shouldn’t be “curated” to look like anything other than the wrinkles in your brain. i often admire the androgyny of georgia o’keefe’s suits, the commerciality of andy warhol’s denim, the blinding beauty of pamela anderson’s bare face, the effortless tailoring of carolyn bessette-kennedy’s jackets, the endearing disheveledness of jane birken’s handbags, the self-assured girlishness of sofia coppola’s t-shirts, and the dramatic volume of andré leon talley’s caftans. you could walk into their closet and instantly be engulfed in their personalities as if it was a fragrance.

the irony is that once you stop thinking about forming an “aesthetic” and what that signals to other people, you will actually build a closet reflective of yourself. my aversion towards analyzing my face bleeds into not worrying if my skirt is a little wrinkled. the dichotomy i feel between being a someone who values having fun and a corporate person bleeds into the mini skirts i wear to meetings. the memories i have of my grandmother wearing her chanel store uniform bleeds into my collection of little vintage jackets. my desire to not take things in my life too seriously bleeds into the bright socks that i always wear. the giant taffeta bows i insisted on wearing as a child bleeds into the satin bows i wear now.

the best dressed people are the ones who let their personalities seep into the seams of their clothing. start by figuring out what kind of music you like, the books you enjoy reading, the art you’re drawn to, the friends you cherish most and why, the moments where feel like you actually exist beyond the glow in your pocket, the fashion that was impressionable to you when you were a child, the movies that have stuck with you and try to deduce what all of these tiny small details mean in the context of who you are. i’m sure it sounds dramatic to conflate so much meaning with what we wear, but we have been given the gift of carving out a teeny tiny part of this world… why wouldn't we want the shape it of it to be so undeniably ourselves nobody else could fit into it without awkwardly crouching down?

THANK YOU FOR READING!

kind of a deranged compilation of photos, i did write this on an amtrak back from philadelphia after drinking two whiskey cocktails with my mom so that might have had something to do with it.

i appreciate you being here thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo