My Philosophy When It Comes Down To Clothes
I have a confession. Outside of my bread and butter of reading and writing, I spend a ridiculous amount of time obsessing over clothes. I spend my weekends going around to shopping malls and thrift stores, always on the hunt for the next piece to add to my wardrobe.
After about a decade of careful curation, now I have a wardrobe that is designed to endure. The wear and tear over the years only added to the character of my collection. Behind those closet doors, there are shirts that have lasted three years, trousers I bought with my first paycheck from my first job and the suit I wore to my senior high formal. The years have added a signature look to all the timeless pieces, and since the garments are all made to endure, they've aged well. Fashion might be something money can buy, but a signature style is something only time can purchase.
However, my relationship with clothes hasn't always been this intimate. When I used to work for a bookshop right out of high school, there was a Uniqlo store right next door. I followed a seasonal ritual of grabbing a few pieces from the store and wearing them out before heading back for more. The pieces were cheap and replacing them made more sense than getting them fixed. At that time, my wardrobe never had a stable identity, and when a new season rolled around it meant emptying everything and starting over again.
But among all the disposable clothes there was one piece that endured time. It was a white Ralph Lauren shirt my dad bought me when I was 13, and it stayed in my wardrobe for six years. The fit was slim for a 19-year-old, but the material showed no tear. Once on a Saturday night out, however, I danced a little too hard at a club and ripped a huge hole in one of the sleeves. Naturally, I was pissed because I destroyed the only decent piece I had in my closet, but in retrospect, that was also the turning point of my relationship with clothes.
I hit up a department store the next day on Burke Street to get the shirt replaced. It turned out that they no longer made the shirt I had because it was so old. After dancing around the store with the shop assistant, I grabbed one with a similar cut and winced a little when I saw the price tag. Before inflation, a poplin shirt retailed for around $169 (more than half of my weekly salary as a bookseller). But alas, since the other one had a giant hole in it, I bit the bullet and replaced it.
Then something magical happened. Instead of chucking the shirt on a chair when I took it off, I hung it up and steamed it every other day. Instead of throwing it in the wash without care, I read the laundry instructions like the gospel. Before I knew it, I started wearing the shirt everywhere: to University, brunches and the library. It became my prized piece and it moulded to my body over time. A few months after buying the shirt, I wandered into a department store and had a wild idea: what if I viewed clothes as a deliberate investment?
From Experiencing to Possessing
In retrospect, it became clear that I shifted from experiencing clothes to possessing clothes. In Byung-Chul Han's book: Non-Things he argued that late-modern human beings aren't interested in things (Han 14)1. We prefer experiences and play over having to take care of possessions. We're trained to fear prized possessions because we fear attachments. The ideal object is the one that can be instantly replaced. With electronics, we find solace in the next iteration and its features. With fast fashion, we experience the clothes before throwing them away. There is no emotional investment in objects at all.
True possession, according to Han, is characterized by intimacy and inwardness (14). This intimacy allows the owner and the object to establish an intensive libidinal [tie] and become close to the heart (15), turning objects into vessels filled with emotions and recollections (15). This is the watch your father passed down to you when you turned 17, and these are the earrings your grandmother wore when she was twenty-something in the 70s. Time gave character to these enduring objects and made them all the more precious.
Narcissism and Smooth Surfaces
Today's world of objects is characterized by smooth surfaces. They remain perfectly clean and square until we have to replace them. This is the iPhone that gets thrown out every year, and these are the jeans that don't last a year. There is no intimacy between us and these smooth objects. We focus on what we can experience via these objects rather than extending care to these objects. We double down on what the object can do for us instead of establishing memories with it. As a consequence, Han noted:
"The narcissistic accumulation of ego libido leads to a decrease in object libido... Object libido creates an object attachment that, in turn, stabilizes the ego. Without any object attachment, the ego is left to... a situation that creates negative feelings such as anxiety or emptiness (Han 44)2."
If we put aside all the psychoanalytical jargon, Han is essentially saying that objects are necessary for stabilising our self-image. Just like my old closet full of pieces I threw out every season, it's hard to establish a stable identity if we're in a constant state of flux (under the marketing forces of social media and brands). Consequently, developing a unique personal style becomes especially difficult because all we hear are the echoes of other people's opinions. And if we're always caught up in change, it leaves us no time to forge close bonds with objects we do love. In a sense, objects and memories carve our safe spaces for us to pause in this world running at a break-neck speed. Or in Han's words:
"The same chair and the same table, in their sameness, lend the fickle human life some stability and continuity3."
The Art of Lingering and Attachment
This practice, however, doesn't just apply to physical possessions. Going to a museum to see a favourite painting or appreciating the interiors of a beautiful cafe also falls into the category of lingering. Han himself adopts the practice of gardening to stabilise his material reality:
"Over three years I established a winter-flowering garden... My understanding from being a gardener is: Earth is magic. Whoever claims otherwise is blind."
And perhaps, there is magic all around us beneath the veil of data and objects that quickly disappear. Maybe leaving everything in the cloud isn't the best idea, and maybe physicality does speak to a fundamental human need. In any case, we can only access the magic by being attached and grounded to our surroundings, because
"It is not the absence of ties, but ties themselves which set us free. Freedom is a word which pertains to relations par excellence. Without hold there is no freedom4."
Notes/References
1Han, Byung-Chul. Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld. Translated by Daniel Steuer, Wiley, 2022.
2Han, Byung-Chul. Capitalism and the Death Drive. Translated by Daniel Steuer, Polity Press, 2021.
3Link to the ArtReview Interview: https://artreview.com/byung-chul-han-i-practise-philosophy-as-art/
4Han, Byung-Chul. The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering. Translated by Daniel Steuer, Wiley, 2017.
