I’m not too long ago divorced after 14 years. I’ve lived world wide and, in a month, I’m set to maneuver to Los Angeles. Through the years I’ve amassed a wardrobe that expresses each the vitality of the locations I lived and the lives I lived in them with the particular person I as soon as liked. However all the pieces in my life is downsizing. So what do I preserve? What do I shed? Tips on how to make these selections? — Donatella, Brooklyn
Not lengthy after the actress Ellen Barkin divorced the billionaire Ronald Perelman when she was simply beginning to movie “Ocean’s 13,” Ms. Barkin determined to dump all the jewellery she had acquired throughout her marriage: a set of over 100 items that had been valued at greater than $15 million.
“These are simply not recollections I wish to put on out every single day,’’ she informed Ruth La Ferla, who wrote in regards to the sale for The New York Occasions.
That’s an excessive response to a divorce, but in addition an comprehensible one. Neglect Proust’s madeleines; garments are repositories of feelings, recollections and tales, and easily seeing them can take us sliding down the wormhole to the previous. That’s partly why we cling on to them: They include the emotional imprint of who we had been after we purchased them, or wore them.
That behavior is commonly seen as a very good factor. It’s what’s behind the apply of maintaining a marriage gown, symbolic of that ceremony of passage. Likewise, my mother-in-law had a rose-print frock that had hung in her closet for many years — a relic from the time she met Queen Elizabeth II as a younger girl after a taking a ship throughout the ocean from Canada.
However this apply can backfire if the tales contained within the materials are sad. If, say, you see a pair of denims and keep in mind the combat you had together with your accomplice once you wore them, or a sure gown makes you recall some unhealthy information you acquired or a skirt brings up emotions of betrayal or entrapment. That’s why, in relation to divorce, magazines similar to Glamour sometimes function articles like, “Getting Over a Divorce Meant Saying Goodbye to All my Lovely Garments.”
In your case, the most effective method could also be to easily undergo your wardrobe and see what feelings are conjured by every garment — basically play free affiliation together with your garments. Maybe do it with a buddy, who can maintain up each bit whilst you say what involves thoughts. It’s a variation on Marie Kondo’s “does this deliver me pleasure” method. Kind the clothes into piles (preserve, discard) in keeping with the sentiments they evoke. When you can’t resolve, create a 3rd group of maybes. In spite of everything, ache does recede with time, and it’s doable {that a} shirt at present filled with angst that after upon a time additionally represented, say, exploration, may in the future once more.
As for the discard pile, take a web page from Ms. Barkin and contemplate promoting garments in good situation on resale websites like Vestiaire or The RealReal. That method, you aren’t solely escaping unhealthy recollections, but in addition cashing in on them and utilizing them as a technique to transfer ahead into your subsequent section. Something that may’t be offered and remains to be in good condition ought to be donated — simply because a bit represents one thing unfavorable for you doesn’t imply it might probably’t be a delight for another person, which in flip could also be a soul enhance for you.
And don’t consider the garments you could abandon as a sacrifice. You wish to winnow down your wardrobe not simply since you are being compelled to by transferring right into a smaller condo, however as a result of it’s liberating to create each literal and psychological area for a brand new you, with a brand new look, to emerge. That chance is a present you may give to your self.
Your Fashion Questions, Answered
Each week on Open Thread, Vanessa will reply a reader’s fashion-related query, which you’ll be able to ship to her anytime through e mail or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.
