Clothing rules for 2023

On the plane to Tokyo, I threw together some rules for clothes I buy, because I knew that Japan is both the best country for retail on the planet and they will have a bunch of stuff I want.

Most of the clothes I buy are on the pricey side. This is because the sort of slow fashion that I like isn’t cheap. We have societally become rather used to buying lots of clothes; I buy very little, instead choosing to build a capsule wardrobe over a really long period of time. Good fabric is expensive, labor is expensive, designing is expensive.

At minimum, if everybody is being paid fairly along the supply chain, a garment should cost north of $300. That also fails to take into account the fact that many, many pieces are less durable, and sold by fancy brands as a way of signifying coolness to others. A lot of people want a fairly standard baseball cap to say BALENCIAGA on it, and they want to pay $200 for the privilege.

I am not that sort of person. For one, I am profoundly uncool. But I also care a lot about good clothes, and I want my clothes to reflect my values with respect to labor, design, and my relationship to the planet. As a result, I find myself sifting through an awful lot of poorly-made designer clothes in order to locate designers, brands, and individual pieces that resonate with me.