All clothes every year

It gives me no pleasure to report that I have been baited again. We saw this coming. It could not be helped. This is the nature of bait.

I was haplessly reading things like a normal person, when I saw a link to an article on the internet about someone who had banned themselves from buying any clothing for two years, and chose to write about it. They had lessons. The clothing ban was now content.

This exists at the center of my interests. It concerns fashion, communication, being seen, wear & patina, one’s relationship to objects, minimalism, and the supply chain. And yet the reaction is preposterously drastic. You have banned yourself from buying socks. You have banned yourself from buying underwear. And you did not do this for two years, because oh, I googled you. You did it for six – and counting. You kept receiving pity socks from friends. You never refused them. We live in a society.

The question is: what is “enough?” The answer is not “nothing.” It is almost certainly “less.” The author has learned this. They have learned the value of mending what they have, accepting the gifts that are already around them. These are important things for all of us to learn.