The Pandemic Made Me a Maximalist
Minimalism feels like the luxury I just can’t afford.
Minimalism feels like the luxury I just can’t afford.
Before all this happened I was trying to teach myself to be a fashion minimalist. I admire everything about minimalism. I think about Sean Scully’s “Black Paintings.” All of Bottega Veneta from 2019. The modernist furnishings and intentionality of @c.commited — a personal style blog on instagram that I’m addicted to. I love how when the color and pattern is gone, you see all the subtle and sculptural elements in design. I love the sense of calm restraint. I love the way it conveys “I know what I’m doing” without so much as a whisper. And I love the notion of everything working together. Of distilled answers rather than more questions.
Before the pandemic, I was slowly moving most of my exuberantly patterned clothing along to consignment. I was shopping to the extent budget would allow for pieces that made a statement through shape and innovation rather than bright colors (hello, Bottega). I was noticing quiet detail and struggling with that part of me that’s always been over the top and exuberant and laugh-loudly-and-talk-too-much, and wondering where she belonged in all this.
That was before. Before, life itself offered so much exuberance that bringing an intentional monotony to it was a magnetic idea, a way to find a certain calming, meditative harmony. We were bombarded daily with so much life in all its forms, unruly, in-your-face life. Travel, season changes, people doing things you never saw coming, FOMO, restaurants opening, popups, etc, etc. It made sense to long for clothing to that brought us a certain quiet assurance, a certain sameness.
Today everything is sameness. If you’re lucky. Sameness is the luxury so many of us long for. Life’s basic ins and outs are threatened for so many (friends with children who have immune disorders, people crowded in prisons for minor or non infractions, cooks who call my husband, not knowing what to do because they’re laid off and not citizens who can collect unemployment).
But today also for those of us who are not in the direst of straits and are simply trying to run a family in every sense of that word (make the money, act like a relatively knowing and calming force, keep the house from falling apart, think about our parents and what they might need), the difference between a good day and a bad day for the entire unit can be mental. Am I going to be a force of positivity, or am I going to be in the bell jar? Finding optimism in the thick of our fears is part of the job. Today those dark, quiet, restrained clothes seem like a luxury of an old life. Right now I long for — but I also need — clothing as a tool to keep me out of that jar. To set the tone for myself and for my family. Yes, even for days on end at home. Especially for days on end at home.
Monotony and moroseness in what I put on is a luxury I definitely can’t afford right now. That seems like something for a forgotten era. I need everything to work in my favor. I need every weapon in my arsenal to not fall apart, and that includes what I wear.
Serendipitously, this is the time when I discovered Trinny Woodall.
And G-d bless the insta algorhythm for bringing Trinny to me. Trinny is someone who, in spite of the way she looks, has not had a perfect life. From what I gather, she’s a British former society type person. She was one of the two personalities on the BBC version of What Not to Wear. She married and had a child with the love of her life who then became addicted to drugs. (At some point she too was addicted to cocaine.) They divorced and he committed suicide. She was single a single mother for a long time, pulled herself together, created a business, Trinny London, which includes a makeup line that I’m obsessed with and you will be too, but also a host of really addictive style content you can find on YouTube, which includes renegade shopping trips through Zara, and my favorite, Closet Confessions, where she culls her wardrobe and addresses topical things like how to “do a proper print clash.”
The red thread that runs through it all is her sunny, exuberant attitude. She’s over the top. She is overt with all her flaws and feelings. She trots. She sings! And she clearly uses fashion (and beauty) to direct her mood. She is the opposite of minimalism in every way; she is hyper maximalism. Embracing sequins for day and leopard on leopard on leopard on leopard. Print mixing and color pairing, the wilder the better. I can’t get enough of her. Especially right now.
My approach to spending during this time has been “net spend no money.” For me that looks like massive closet cleaning, shipments to the Real Real, and spending no more than what I make there. So nothing crazy, just a few advantageous purchases that will have a small impact on the economy and closet and a big impact on my mood.
I’ve bought the kinds of things I haven’t bought since I think I was in seventh grade. Orange and blue pants from the Staud sale. A blue Sandro sale sweater with an S on it that my husband said reminds him of Richie Cunningham. (I believe it was a compliment.) Red suede M.Gemi loafers. A sweatshirt covered in cornflower blue flowers. All of it used or conscious and all of it designed with a specific purpose in mind: optimism.
They are clothes to distract me enough from worrying — about things like how I get migraines sometimes that are so bad I have to go to the hospital to break them and I can’t go to the hospital right now and about my parents and my husband’s parents and especially my mom who gets pneumonia and my friends who are sole providers whose jobs are at risk — enough so I can get up and do good work and almost sleep through the night. Somehow orange pants that look like they come from the set of “That Girl” and endless watchings of Trinny at bed time help.
Everything will be different when this ends. Apart from the worst of it, the death toll, there won’t be business as usual to go back to. But in small ways, too, we will be changed. Already when I look back on my aching for minimalism it seems so distant and far away and luxurious. A time when I didn’t need clothes to control my mood. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to that.