I have a fashion hangover

- and I think I need to chug water for a while.

Right. So I need to share this.

I’m proud to say at 53 it’s been a while since I’ve had bed spins.

But not so proud to tell you that I’m currently lying here watching floor become wall and wondering why I couldn’t have just kept that nice buzz. Rather than starting in with the shots.

It was an emotional summer. My family is in New England and I very much love my family, but it’s really hard to leave Miami. I finally got to a city where feel I belong, and it’s so hard to explain, but it’s not just a “slightly different” feeling. It’s a massive change in my happiness that manifests itself physically. (If it didn’t make that big of a difference I would never leave my family.) When I’m away I feel a kind of low and a potential for anxiety/depression that I have to really stay on top of. We also had a couple funerals this summer, and I am in an emotional place with my son. And my dad is having health issues. So all of it, of course, led me to shopping.

Basically, anytime I got sad, I browsed or bought. If you’re having a snack, you might take out a bag of, say, sweet potato chips, and put some in a bowl and have a glass of Pellegrino and that would be so good. That’s generally how I shop. But you know how sometimes you say fuck the bowl and you have some huge ass bag of Lays you don’t even really like, and you just shove your hand in and keep repeating and repeating and jawing and jawing and at some point your eyes glaze over and you might even realize you’re not even tasting these … and still keep going? Right. I try not to shop like that. But that’s how it’s been. Phony quests for things I don’t need. I like to be so honest, but have dreaded “confessing” (a sign). Endless justifications. And at the end of it all, no more answers, only more questions. More to deal with. A long walk of shame.

This is what a walk of shame looks like.

In summer I stay at my in laws’, and I have been using two very large guest room closets there. I’ve stored “The Museum” (see what I’m talking about here) winter pieces I can’t part with. At first I kept one closet for an actual guest. And then bit by bit, I took them both over. I ordered more hangers from Amazon. I shopped every time I was in Boston, I shopped in Maine, I shopped in New York, I shopped online.

I said I was learning. I said I was making content. I said I was supporting small businesses. I said I was being thoughtful. I said everything but this: I was really sad.

At the end of the summer, I had Covid, so I was isolated, and it ended up working out because I needed multiple days, solo, to sort through the detritus of this sorrow and try to make it better. I had stuff all over. Piles and piles. In almost every room. (We are in a separate guest house.) And the last thing I needed was to arrive back in New England next summer to chaos. Also, I knew I wanted to do more flying back and forth over the course of the year (my dad needs four surgeries), and I wanted a complete mini wardrobe at my parents’; so I could do it really easily. So I made piles, had my son bring bags to my parents’, sent a box to Dora Maar, and shipped 4 boxes to Miami. I left the rest tidy and in great shape.

But I’m now in Miami reckoning with those shipped boxes. And also, with more boxes, containing all the things I kept ordering from New England and sending here. And then on top of that I just watched the Tibi fashion show (spoiler alert: I want most of it), and I’ve been reading all these magazines, and I’m back living seven minutes from the Design District, and the NYFW missives keep coming, and there’s just this overload of things to see and all this fashion deliciousness and there’s just no room. Mentally, physically. I need to put a foot on the ground and stop the spinning.

While I realize this particular story is particular to me, I’m guessing the feelings aren’t. And I have some thoughts on how to get yourself out of it.