The healing power of a wardrobe audit

I want to learn from my mistakes

Now that my newsletter is fully up and running, I’m wondering what new angles and directions my writing might find itself in. January seems like a good opportunity to write a little more personally, to talk a little more about who I am and where I’m at. As I mentioned in last week’s post looking back on my first four months on Substack, I’m treating this as my own little magazine — I’m writing the kind of fashion content that I want to read myself, and kinda just hoping that it resonates. 

They say that novices crave encouragement, but experts crave criticism, and that’s absolutely the case for me: I’ve been writing for over ten years now, but now that I’m completely self-employed, I don’t have any colleagues to bounce ideas around with or get feedback from. So any constructive criticism I receive is super valuable, especially at this early stage into my Substack project. So if this piece is interesting, boring, relevant, not relevant, whatever — do let me know in the comments. 

January is a time for new beginnings — it’s the month to start a gym memberships, quit booze and download meditation apps. I’m not normally a big resolutions guy, but at the beginning of the year I always take some time to do a wardrobe audit. It’s not really a cleanse, it’s more about taking a look through all the clothes I own, and seeing how I feel about them. Maybe that means putting a piece or two up on Vinted or Grailed, but maybe not.

I don’t have that much stuff to get rid of these days, as I’m very much in a BIFL mindset (that’s Buy It For Life for those of you who aren’t on Reddit). I’m wary of too much branding, spend a lot of time trying stuff on, even when shopping online, and am happy to spend more to get my hands on something I’ll wear for years (otherwise known as trading up). But in the past, I’ve done a lot of clear outs. Actually, it was more like one giant, years-long cleanse. 

As I explained in my book, I used to really suck at shopping, and after I left my old job at Highsnobiety, I spent a lot of time figuring out what the hell went wrong with my shopping habits. A lot of this ended up going into the book — I spent such a big portion of it questioning society’s shopping habits, because I was putting so much energy into questioning my own. You’d think someone who was working in the heart of the industry would be a) well dressed and b) good at buying clothes but no, I sucked at both. Here’s how I put it in my book: 

“I used to be bad at shopping. Back when I was working as a fashion editor, my professional life revolved around new collections, collaborations, drops and designers. I was essentially injecting consumerism into my veins for eight hours a day. And while there are some in the industry who can endure that with their sense of self control intact, I couldn’t. I know people love to hear about personal journeys but honestly, my experience of consumerism was a pretty common one. I filled my life up with stuff that I neither liked nor needed, and spent a lot of money doing it.”

I wasn’t especially indulgent compared to most in the industry — even at the height of my bad habits, I probably owned around ten jackets and ten pairs of shoes — but I had a ton of stuff that I didn’t wear. Like most people, I ended up wearing the same things over and over again, with the majority of my belongings lingering in the back of my wardrobe. And even then, I didn’t feel great about the things I did wear. I might have been reviewing collections and interviewing designers for a living, but clothes were just something I put on my body before I headed into the office.

I left my job at Highsnobiety at the end of 2018, and I went on a huge cleanse straight away. I listed everything I could on resell sites, and slowly but surely, sold almost all of it. Anything I couldn’t sell, I donated. It took forever to get rid of it all, but five years later I can count on one hand the pieces that I still have from back then. 

At the beginning of 2019, a few months after I left my old job, I came across Extinction Rebellion’s call to only buy second hand for a year. That felt like exactly the kind of thing to do at the time. I spent a whole year in the depths of Ebay, Depop and Kleinanzeigen (a German version of Craigslist), and wrote about my experience in a piece for The Guardian. 

At the time, disconnecting myself from the churn of trends, drops and collaborations felt liberating. But if I’m being honest, I couldn’t do it forever. I have pretty particular tastes, and fit isn’t always easy either — I wear an XL, sometimes XXL, and need trousers in a 34 leg. The resell sites are perfect for digging, especially if you’re looking for something really special, but when you’ve got an almost-empty wardrobe like I did, it’s not ideal. I was more or less trying to follow the principles of a capsule wardrobe, and imagined that I’d come out the other side of it looking like Neukölln’s answer to Nick Cave, but honestly, I felt like a boring guy in a boring shirt. I ended up back in the same place I was at in my Highsnob era — but instead of not wearing my Needles trackpants, I wasn’t wearing my second-hand Hugo Boss shirts.

So I was kinda relieved when the year of second hand came to an end, right before the pandemic. Like the rest of the world, I did some revenge shopping when things opened up again. I got a bit carried away at times, and bought some shirts I didn’t really need. On a trip to New York, I came back with a ring I never really liked, and a bizarre tee from Supreme that I absolutely did not need (shopping capitals like New York and London are dangerous —  learn from my mistakes, people).

But overall, I am so much better at shopping now. That’s something I’ve really realized from this year’s audit. In previous years, looking through my wardrobe felt like cataloging all my mistakes — I have a spreadsheet to keep track of the things I’m selling online, and make sure I add some comments besides everything that gets listed. Yes, I know, total dork behavior, but I want to learn from my mistakes. 

But now, after years of pondering, ruminating and writing about my bad shopping habits, I think the regret purchases are behind me. I am a very firm believer in the power of self-knowledge — I try to believe that every mistake is also a lesson, and taking some time to reflect on things that matter to you is a great way to cultivate self-awareness. And that’s why I always take some time every January to look through everything I own, to see how it makes me feel. Clothes are important to me, so I want to give them the attention and thought they deserve.

So this year’s audit has been a really good experience. I’ve come a long way from my Highsnob era. And I’ve let go of all the “classic” stuff that actually just felt boring. I wear everything I own. If anything, I don’t have enough winter clothes. It sounds absurd for someone who writes about clothes for a living and lives in Berlin, but I kinda forgot that I should also have something nice to wear when it’s cold. Life just kept getting in the way, what with the pandemic, dying relatives, failing relationships, writing the book, taxes and the rest of it. I might have written a book about conscious consumerism, but it’s -5c today and I don’t have any hats.

I’m not knocking the idea of a capsule wardrobe — it’s an amazing way of looking at clothes — and there’s a lot of people out there who are taking up pledges to only buy X amount of new pieces per year. Like the year of only buying second hand, these are all really healthy things to do. But, being realistic, they’ll work best for people who already have relatively full wardrobes. When you’re looking for a fun little thing to throw into the mix, second hand is perfect, and a capsule wardrobe might be easier to imagine when you’ve already got the essentials covered.

We have a tendency to take good ideas and then make them oppressive. Conscious shopping, minimalism, whatever you want to call it — you should do it to feel good, not to punish yourself. As my therapist once told me, meditation and mindfulness often become yet more things we use to beat ourselves up with. Instead of trying to cultivate a more peaceful mind, we get pissed at ourselves for losing our 11-day streak on Headspace. 

Rethinking what we allow into our lives is a very good thing. But it’s human nature to accumulate things for no reason, even if our lives are a million miles away from the consumerist machine — my mum, who spent her life writing about sexual violence in schools, has been trying to get rid of her jewelry on Etsy for five years now. Karl Marx complained that there was “too much industry, too much commerce” in the world in 1848. So yes, be aware of what you buy, but don’t beat yourself up — minimalism has always been a luxury anyway. Kim Kardashian can afford to pay Axel Vervoordt to design a “minimalist monastery”, and the concept works great when you can afford to fill your closet with Phoebe Philo and the Row. But for the rest of us, life isn’t always so easy. 

Kyle Chayka, who’s a columnist for the New Yorker, wrote an excellent book on minimalism, called The Longing For Less. He’s a great writer, and I’ve got his next book — which is about the algorithm’s effect on culture — on preorder already. In The Longing For Less, he imagines minimalism less as an oppressive doctrine or an aesthetic, and more as a way of reconnecting with the essential essence of things. Minimalism, to him, is about making “simple things more complicated, not the other way around.” Great read, would recommend.

So, I’m beginning the year by looking back on some of the pieces that weren’t quite right for me, like the Supreme rayon shirt from back in SS12, which I adored — that was such a great period for the brand — but I had to let go, because it was too small for me. And I’m grateful for the good purchases I’ve made, like the short sleeve denim shirt from Our Legacy, which I’ve been obsessed with since I laid eyes on it. 

This is all really, really nerdy, I know. But it’s healthy. It feels really good to take a step back to see how your clothes make you feel, to reconnect with what you love about fashion in the first place, and see how you could do things a little better (the best shopping advice I would give to anyone — think about what you want, and take it slow). We, as a society, urgently need to reconsider our shopping habits — we buy way too much stuff, as I’ve said a million times before — and that’s what a wardrobe audit is all about: rethinking your shopping habits. It’s a powerful thing, just don’t beat yourself up with it.