No 4. The Myth of the "Forever Pieces" & F*ck it
This might just be less of a metaphor about closets and more about the world feeling out of control right now.
Just like “capsule wardrobe” and “style DNA,” we’ve all heard the phrase a “forever piece.” You’re looking at someone and maybe a friend or a sales associate makes sure to mention “its something you can keep for forever!” That it is the kind of investment that will stick with you for the rest of your life.
When I shop, I have a fantasy of the pieces I’m buying. I see myself older wearing that thick black wool sweater and gifting it to my grandkids or buying pair of Japanese denim that just gets the perfect level of worn over the years. Over the past decade I have bought with the idea “forever pieces,” but recently I’ve realized that sometimes it’s not possible practically and its feeling harder to accept emotionally.
Living in the Catskills, we bought our home thinking of putting down roots. But I’ve really always been rootless. I’ve been to 6 different schools by the time that I graduated high school - spread across North Carolina, New Orleans, New Jersey, and France. The thing that moved with me all through my childhood was always my clothes. Even as I moved around apartments in NYC to different countries from Malawi to India to Nepal to Indonesia to the UK — my clothes have been the most steady and comforting items I have. They have always freely moved with me and I love the idea of picking up a new piece for the journey. I feel memories when I look at something. I remember where I got it, with whom, and how it felt.
In an recent internet spiral in thinking about our house in the Catskills and juggling the thoughts of renovations, I read this article in Time “Stop Looking for your Forever Home” who talks about so many facets of the concept from how the real estate has marketed the “forever home” as a tactic to increase buyers in unfavorable times to her own personal grappling with the realities of budget and the bigger lesson that things can be good for right now. She ends it with “Nothing is forever.”
Now that reality is coming to the one thing that has moved with me everywhere — my closet— aka my memories. Over the past 9 months, I have lost quite a bit of weight. Due to a diagnosis of PCOs coupled with a new medication, getting off another one, new eating habits and lots of work on my mental health — I’m now the size I was before a moment that needed a lot of healing from in 2018. It’s like my body is back to a place that I had accepted it wouldn’t be. I was proud of how my body had held me through tough times and I had learned to dress myself. I felt uncomfortable in my new size but I also accepted it and loved it. I bought pieces with my body as that starting point. I didn’t want to buy for a different version of me.
To be honest, right now, I feel a bit like an alien in this one. I don’t quite trust it. I might not for a couple years just as it took me a few years to really learn to accept how my body had changed.
Right now, I have two pairs of pants that actually fit me properly around the waist. I need a new pair of pants - but when I think about investing in a great pair of denim - I think about if I start a family in the next few years how my body will change and that pant will be rendered null just like how my favorite Mother jeans are now. Or investing in a tweed Chanel jacket which has been on my wishlist for years I have no idea what size to get. My brain goes to how menopause might shift my size and I won’t be able to wear it into older age. But the big anxiety ridden big brain whisper is the hard one to accept — what if I get back to a place of depression where my body flares and it all comes back?
I feel stuck - choosing to lean into oversized looks and making my current closet work as much as possible. I’ve thought about tailoring some pieces but then it makes it challenging for people when I put it back in the cycle of resell and donate. I think about pulling a Tibi style class and cutting up a bunch of stuff — but then I think about what If I become that size again and I’ll be happy to have that piece.
I’m hesitant to buy anything right now - already sad that the pieces I have loved in the closet might now have a place in my future.
The “forever piece”— if not a bag or a piece of jewelry — is a myth.
Just like the author of the “Problem of the ‘Forever Home’,” I can only think about right now.
If you’re following — well the state of the whole world right now - everything feels destabilized - our values, our environment, our economy, our humanity - it’s all in flux. And talking about a closet is silly in comparison in reality it’s a distillation of control for me and feeling a sense of safety. My clothes used to feel like a safety blanket of memories, stability, and knowing. But now my body feels foreign, which feels weirdly unsafe, and it’s happening at the same time where the world feels unsafe - like its deciding its future.
So, I’m loosening my grip and going to take some lessons from the Buddhist principle of non-attachment. But also borrowing a little from a place of joy - a place of “f*ck it!”
Instead of worrying about what my body might fit into in a few years, I have to stay in the now. Celebrate how I feel knowing that I know more about how my body works and I’m eating healthier. I celebrated my freaking age the other day when I got a mini dress - black crochet for summer that is so short but hot because honestly - why wait? Nothing is going to be with me forever so I must enjoy and take advantage right now. I’m deploying all the values we’ve talked about - buying what we love so we don’t over consume and taking good care of our things so that it can have a life long after we’ve enjoyed it.
Sure a gorgeous leather bag can last “forever” and I am not going to turn down jewelry - but when it comes to the closet that holds our memories and travels with us no matter where we shift - f*ck forever cause living in the now is way more of a celebration of what is good right now.
It’s also working for me outside of just my closet - where one news cycle feels like doom, but then the other voices feel like fresh water making its way down from the mountain. Forever isn’t a promise - it’s a hope for control. Now is possibilities.
A “forever piece” is simply a ploy to get you to spend way more money on an item. I’ve found I can get just as tired/bored/disappointed whatever with a $5,000 item as I would of a $5 Target buy. I refuse to be controlled any longer by the vagaries and vicissitudes of fashion and those individuals that dictate them. I absolutely agree with your current mentality!
Anyone else out there in the f*ck it / now mentality right now?