Closet thinking

"Out of the items in the wardrobe I will select the items that make up the self I plan to be that day".
So writes Linda Grant in The Thoughtful Dresser.
     Compared to Linda Grant's, my wardrobe is pitifully small (and my life no doubt comparably narrower than hers), but I see myself as just the one 'self' with no need for a bewildering array of garments to express any other facets of my being; or, on the other hand, maybe I'm a dull person. 
     I truly dislike shopping for clothes. I admire beautiful things and am interested in them in an aesthetic and cultural sense, but I will only go and look for clothes for me when I absolutely have to. I am thus a low-maintenance woman who buys few - but good quality - things and makes them last. That's not to say that I don't care about what I put on, because I certainly do, and I take (a lot of) notice of what other people wear, and I love to read descriptions of clothes in books, but just as Jean Muir's working wardrobe was only ever navy blue, mine is similarly edited.
     I enjoyed the book's literary references from Austen to Zola, Edith Wharton to E. M. Delafield, and the peeks into the well-filled cupboards of others are illuminating, if occasionally alarming, but I found it all rather haphazard and fragmentary, and a potentially fascinating subject  - why we wear what we wear, and what functions other than the purely practical clothes perform for us - has been squandered rather to the personal and the sensational: a more considered, ordered, objective approach would have made for a much more satisfying book.
    But as with clothes, it's all a matter of taste.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

I too dislike shopping for clothes but gradually I think that is beginning to weaken, and if it was more fun for me (most things won't fit as I'm too small/slim) I think I might get quite into it. I too see myself as a unified whole, but that however doesn't mean I wouldn't like an expanded range of clothing to express the different facets of myself. I did surprise myself last year by spending nearly two hours, in eight different shops in C. London, looking for just the right tie for a Morgana photoshoot!

[Karen]

Snap! I ordered this book from Amazon just last night, and your review has further whetted my appetite. I adore clothes, but have to learn to weed out my closet more frequently so I can actually SEE what I have.

[Pamela]

I love beautiful clothes as an art form of sorts. But I find I only find things I love when I am not actually looking for them. To have to go out and find the perfect outfit for an occasion is never successful!