Why flimsy falling apart clothes ARE a feminist issue

Those of you that have been following my challenge so far will know that I'm starting to fret about the impact that general wear and tear could have on my ability to manage the full year whilst looking (passably) respectable.

I really don't want to have to go to work in t-shirts with holes in them or anything that has gone limp as a result of too many washes. So I've been asking myself: why do my clothes last so much less time than Matt's?

Seriously.

I work from home or in the office, and he works on a building site. He has 1 pair of jeans, one suit ,some site trousers and a handful of tops. I have (or had) a gazillion items of clothing. So Matt was wearing his clothes more often than me, asked more of them in terms of toughness, and they still lasted longer than mine.

How can this be?

I did a bit of a poll of my friends and it turns out this isn't unique to Matt & I. My friends with a reasonable amount of clothes say their clothes wear out faster than their partners and those who (like me) normally have overflowing wardrobes also say that those clothes they wear regularly tend to fall to bits, and actually lots of women talked about having bought clothes that barely survived one wash. The only exceptions I can find to the falling apart clothes trend amongst my friendship group are the ladies that tend to wear unisex clothing and those that wear vintage.

But none of my male friends said the same about their clothes. In fact several proudly crowed about still wearing t-shirts they bought when they were in their teens and early twenties.

So do women get sold clothes that are worse quality than men's and if so why?

Well (as usual) I think I have a theory. 

My male friends buy less clothes (as a rule) than my female friends. And they expect them to last - so they buy on the basis of quality and manafacturures respond to that. Matt still whinges about a pair of jeans he bought 7 years ago that only lasted one year, and I'm confident he will never buy that brand again. 

One of the reasons men buy less clothes is because mens fashions change much more slowly and subtly than womens. There is no appreciable difference between 'this years shirt' and 'last years' shirt - so why not keep wearing last years?

But women's fashions leap around year to year, with cuts, colours and fabrics coming in and out of trend season apon season. And women buy new clothes in order to keep up, creating a lot more churn in our wardobes. From a manufacturers point of veiw if we're only going to wear an item for one season why invest money in a manufacturing it to last any longer?

The interesting bit of this for me is this- who is it that actually wants us to change our style 2 or 3 times a year? It's not to our benefit as women to have to worry about how to pull off cullotes or Bardot tops for goodness sakes. But it does benefit businesses - manufacturers, retailers, and all of the other industries that blossom around selling us more and different things. And it benefits them because it allows them to make money.

I don't think businesses like womens money more than men's either - I think they'd have boys wearing purple pvc in spring and and felted onesies in autumn if they thought they could make money out of it. But they can't, because men have always been judged by who they are and what they do and so they don't rest their self esteem on fitting in with the way 'everyone' looks this season.

It's different for us as women. It's only a couple of generations back that a good wife was seen and not heard, with the emphasis on seen. The way to tell if a man had good taste, or a good income was to look to his wife, was she pretty, obedient, was she wearing the latest style? Men are (like it or not) still judged by society on the appropriateness of the women on their arms.

And we as women, are emerging blinking into a society that is just beginning to recognise that our value is greater than the compliments that our husbands recieve about us. We're still objectified, our intellect is of far less interest to the media than our boyfriends, babies, diets and shoes. Our mothers have taught us what it is to be appropriate, to dress appropriately and respectably, as their mothers taught them, and their mother's mothers before that.

And so we buy into wearing what everyone is wearing - because fitting in is only polite. And if what everyone is wearing changes season apon season then naturally so is what we wear. And so as a result we get sold crap as men get sold quality.

What to do? Here are the three things that we women could do to change this.

1. Work out what we feel good wearing, and then only buy that. Screw what everyone else is wearing.
2. Complain in writing (& on social media) when our clothes fall apart, and then don't shop in those stores again.
3. Promote the labels that do last, by telling people about them, investing in them again next time and letting them know they've done well.

The only way we get clothes that last is by demonstrating with our shopping habits that that is what is valuable to us and profitable to stores.

Because fashion itself isn't sexist - our culture is. And culture is people and we as people can shape it. So let's.

What do you think?

What does the way I shop say about me?

So since last week’s emotional shopping incident I’ve been thinking a lot about what is in my wardrobe and the reasons I buy things. I wondered what my shopping habits said about me and what impact this 12 month long challenge might have on me.

And here’s what I came up with:

I don’t like to feel negative emotions

Ok so at this point I guess you are thinking:

 a) no one likes to feel negative emotions   
and
 b) didn’t you cover this last week?

But what I mean is that it’s not just that I don’t like to feel these emotions but actually that I don’t let myself. And that’s crucial because most of the really emotionally healthy people I know let themselves experience what they are feeling.

I don’t. I distract myself, I don’t want to talk about it, or think about it. So I choose the one activity where I can successfully do neither – shopping.

No wonder I hate Oxford Street. It turns out I exclusively go there when I feel rubbish. I went back over every crappy day I remember in the last few years and where did I find myself at the end of it? Shopping.

I estimate about 50% of my clothes are misery garbs. Which is, you know, delightful.

I’m weirdly over concerned with what is expected of me

What does smart casual mean? What does one wear to a christening? To the ballet? To a house party in Dalston or a Hoxton club night?

Guaranteed I’ve bought a new outfit for each of these occasions.

Which is stupid because people who like you, or want to like you don’t give a crap what you are wearing. And if you are hanging out with people who don’t already like you, or aren’t open to liking you then stop it. Seriously go to another party. One where the nice people are.

So why have I spent so much time and money buying things that let me ‘fit in’ at these things? Because fitting in is comfortable. We all want to do it, and we chase that feeling of being recogmnised and approved of by people we like. Except that when we wear things that don’t fit who we are we feel inauthentic and uncomfortable and people pick that up. Intellectually I know this - sadly it doesn't prevent me from shopping to fit in really regularly.

I can’t believe how many clothes I own that I’ve only worn once because they were bought for a particular occasion. Or how many occassions I have gone to essentially in disguise, robbing myself of self expression and potentially giving people completely the wrong impression about me.

This year not having the option of buying stuff for a particular event will be a gift. Hopefully 10 more months of not having the opportunity to 'dress up' as someone different will break me of the habit.

I really enjoy not being broke

I mean come on – if you are used to having nothing to spare it’s exciting to be able to waste money.

Matt & I have spent years, YEARS, struggling to pay our rent. Living in basements, and tiny scuzzy flats, living off chana masala and beans on toast. And we were happy enough. But suddenly over the last couple of years we’ve had a bit to spare.More than we need in fact.

And because I’ve never had anything to spare I don’t WASTE exactly. I pretty much exclusively buy in the sale or from charity shops. But it is fun not to have to worry about every penny spent and somehow this has gone from treating myself on occasion to consumption for it’s own sake. Because why wouldn't I buy that £6 tshirt, if I can afford it? What a giddy rush to be able to afford it! This kind of behaviour is not really ok, and if I’m going to do it, it should be on actual consumables like wine. Rather than stuff that I get guilt every time I look at.

I try to emulate people I admire by copying their style

Not deliberately but it definitely happens. I’ve lost count of the number of clothes I’ve passed on to the people I must have been thinking about when I bought them.

The thing is I might not have nailed down my personal style. But one thing I have  got nailed is my excellent taste in friends. There is not a single one of my friends who I am not immensely proud of and who I don’t want to emulate in some way.

I want to be:

• As considered as Cat,
• As empathic and spontaneous as Charlie,
• As emotionally intelligent as Chrissy,
• As nurturing as Kristin,
• As forthright as Racheal,
• As dryly funny as Sarah,
• As committed to decency and kindness as Ange,
• I want to be as overflowing with joy as Laura and Bob,
• As honest with myself as Jo,
• And I want Sean’s ability to get people to be their best selves around him, Donna’s creativity, Heather’s honesty and Hannah’s absolute commitment to being who she is.

I want all of these things. And my best chance of getting them is spending my time with these people – not trying to look like them.

Again – hopefully the next 10 months is long enough to learn this lesson.

Anyway – that’s what I’ve learnt about me. And I have 10 more months to keep on learning. So what does the way you shop say about you?

And as usual – for you rules checkers – here is what I’ve worn this week

Saturday (Day 64)

Sunday (Day 65)

Monday (Day 66)

Tuesday (Day 67)

Wednesday (Day 68)

Thursday (Day 69)

For clarification - one of my friends suggested it looked like I was doing something naughty here. I am not - I'm attempting to play a slide whistle.

Friday (Day 70)

Saturday (Day 71)

Can your capsule wardobe survive the wear? My sandals haven't

Yesterday I completed my 8th week doing the clothes of my back challenge and I've begun to realise something a bit scarey. When you wear your clothes a lot - they wear out really fast!

I appreciate the rest of you probably knew that - but for me this is genuinely a bit of a shock. I was prepared for my clumsyness to rob me of an item (hello grey t-shirt, don't worry I have plans for you....), but I thought everything else would just tick along for the whole year. But already I can feel my tshirts getting thinner with each wash.

And worse my sandals are beginning to give up the ghost. 

On the third or fourth day of the challenge I went to the pub with some fellow dog owners and a couple of them expressed real concerns about my sandals. They all know how much time I spend walking and didn't think they'd last the course. I naturally poo pooed them explaining that the rules allowed me to wear my walking sandals when I was walking the dog (as long as it wasn't a social walk that'd end up with a coffee or a meal somewhere), so the sandals wouldn't really see that much punishment.

How wrong can one person be. What I think I'd forgotten about myself is three things:

• I walk a lot. Everywhere, all the time. Even not counting walking the dog I probably do 6-8000 steps a day
• I like to get my toes out. So if it's not raining I will be wearing sandals. So far I've worn them 37 out of 56 days. That is 66% of the time. I start wearing sandals in March and rarely put them away until October. If I continue to wear them at this rate for that long we are talking 146 days of wear.
• I'm not 23 anymore.

Not being 23 anymore might feel a bit irrelevant here - but it isn't. I truly wish that sometime in my late teens or early 20's someone had taken me aside and told me, really convinced me that continually slamming my heels against the pavement in paper thin soled shoes would come back to haunt me. I wore ballet shoes (note not ballet flats - actually wear to dance class when you are 6 ballet shoes) to tramp around Sheffield for years.

I can't do that anymore. The padding on my heel has worn down after years of abuse and feeling the pavement through my shoes hurts now. It sends shocks of pain up my legs, it's more than a little bit grim. And about two weeks ago this began to happen with my sandals. 

I panicked a bit about this - I don't really have room for another pair of shoes in the capsule ( I currently have 4 and have allowed for 5 with some winter boots), unless I'm prepared to sacrifice a winter jumper or a second pair of jeans. But equally there is another 109 days when I'm going to want to be wearing sandals to get through that I can't spend in pain.

So my first thought was to try and fix them. The lovely chaps at the cobblers put on new soles for me. This gave me an additional couple of millimeters between me and the pavement. What they couldn't do anything about was the wear on the cork, which has basically compressed as a result of an 11 stone woman taking 260,000 steps in them and so has lost it's shock absorbing qualities.

Insoles in sandals are a tricky issue, I always think a visible insole in a sandal is slightly revolting. Just a receptacle for sweat and odour  - a sanitary towel for the foot. This is not an option for me. But after a bit of a search around I found some gel pads in M&S. I took some photos of them here - they are not pretty! They are also super tricky to get into sandals that have anything that goes over the top of your foot.

Still eventually I got them in, they are invisible once the sandals are on and they are a tiny bit more comfortable. But if I'm honest will they see me through another 109 days of wear? Doubtful. And the attempt to get them fixed wasn't cheap either £25 for the new soles and £5 for the gel pads. I'm really aware that these repair attempts wouldn't be an option for some of the parents Contact a Family support, who are struggling to make ends meet due to the extra costs of raising a child with additional needs. And being comfortable in your shoes isn't a luxury.

Anyway, I think you can expect to see a new pair of sandals being added to this mix over the next week or so. Which means there is something else I won't be able to have come winter - so let's just hope it's a mild one!

Why am I putting myself through this you may ask? Because 65% of families with disabled children Contact A Family spoke to said they went without essentials like clothes in order to cover the additional costs of meeting their child's needs.

This is not ok and I'm raising money for Contact A Family and awareness of the challenges families face through the #clothesoffmyback extreme capsule challenge. You can help by donating to Contact A Family's work supporting these families here and by sharing my posts through your social networks.

 Finally for all you rules checkers out there here is what I wore on days 55 and 56

How to clear out your wardrobe (for people who aren't naturally minimalist)

Today I am 55 days into my capsule wardrobe challenge, and I have finally, finally got enough emotional distance from the clearing of my wardrobe to be able to talk about it without being overcome by waves of fear and nausea. 

I’ve gone from having clothes overflowing from my double wardrobe, massive chest of drawers and ottoman, as well as strategic piles of clothes around the house (I wrote about the ridiculous amount of clothes I owned here) to wearing just 21 items for the last two months and 35 all year. I’m really enjoying how clear my wardrobe looks now. 

Doesn't it just fill you with a sense of calm?

 I’ve read loads of blogs recently about what a beautiful and cathartic experience an extreme clear out of your wardrobe is.  I’m here to say it wasn’t like that for me.

Those people who felt exhilarated and like their rooms suddenly had more light are potentially aliens and definitely better at this than me. Because when I finished I just felt knackered and grubby, and incapable of taking another decision ever.

For me it was two days of self doubt, punctuated by gin drinking and despair. Followed by about three weeks of revisiting the stuff I decided to keep and reducing it bit by bit.

Everyone says you should start by getting all your clothes out of the wardrobe (& wherever else you keep them) and putting them in a pile. So that’s what I did. I created a small mountain of clothes on the bed which my dog immediately decided looked like the most comfortable place in the house and planted herself on top of. This meant that every time I wanted to look at a piece of clothing I had to negotiate with an increasingly resentful dog who just wanted to sleep on the super comfy new bed I’d made for her.

Anything that had direct contact with Squeak had dogs hair on it which meant that rather than having a keep/ don’t keep pile I had a rather more complicated system of keep, keep needs washing, keep needs dry cleaning, throw away, resell, resell needs washing, resell needs dry cleaning – it was mayhem. And I hadn’t properly delineated the piles so they kept drifting into one another.

Deciding what went in which pile was pretty hellish. Stuff I totally hated, or had holes in was easy, but everything else not so much. It turns out I’ve got a load of things that I had weird guilt about  the idea of getting rid of - Because who in their right mind gets rid of a perfectly serviceable striped t-shirt – even if they do have another 20 that are practically identical? And cashmere, you can’t throw away cashmere, or silk- they are investments – they are supposed to last a lifetime. And things I wore in 6^th form – I must love them right? Otherwise why would I still own them 17 YEARS later?

Long story short at the end of my first attempt at de cluttering my wardrobe I’d got the equivalent of a large suitcase worth of stuff to sell, 2 binbags to throw away, and 2 extra large vacuum pack bags designed to hold a families worth of duvets and pillows of things that I ‘needed’ to hold on to for next year (in case you are wondering there were 11 striped tshirts in that bag – because you know there might come a time when you can’t go into ANY SHOP ON THE HIGH STREET and find one).

So attempt number 1 was a bit of a fail. 

But over the next couple of weeks I got there. What worked for me was two things.

The first was instigating a strict rule – once something went in the sell pile it couldn’t come back out. This just meant I’ve emotionally divorced myself from anything in those piles and have happily started to sell them without looking back.

The second was that I didn’t let myself put any of the stuff I was saving back into my drawers or cupboards. They had to stay vacuum packed and in my bedroom. And those vacuum packs are huge and ugly so that was a hugely motivating factor over the next few weeks.

I grew to hate the sight of those bags, and so finally I made a deal with myself. I was allowed to put aside some clothes for next year, and I’d let myself use two of my drawers to put them in. Everything I wanted to keep had to fit in those drawers, and if it didn’t then it’d have to go in the vacuum pack and I’d have to keep the pack in sight of my bed all year.

Let me tell you it is much easier to get rid of a striped t-shirt when it is a choice between getting rid of it or living with the first thing you see every morning being a plastic and beige monstrosity filled with guilt clothes. 

So those are my clear out tips:

·         Once you’ve decided something can go don’t look back

·         If you have to own storage make it ugly – that way you are motivated not to need it!

Remember if you are having a clear out you can raise money for Contact a Family by selling your clothes on ebay and donating some or all of the sale price. It’s really easy and ebay donate the money for you automatically once the sale goes through. I wrote a helpful how to guide if you want to give this a go.

Alternatively you could just sponsor me to keep going here.

And finally for all you rule checkers here is what I wore on days 52,53 & 54

Take care folks,

Ed x

The shiney thing that has made my day

I thought the thing I'd miss most this year would be my vintage dresses. I took the decision ahead of the challenge that my favourite couple of dresses simply wouldn't stand up to daily wear. They were handmade in the 50's and everything about them is just a bit fragile. I decided that I'd sell most of them and just put aside the ones I couldn't bear to part with for a years rest.

But they are not what I've missed most. What I've missed most has nothing to do with the challenge, except as far as my sense of identity goes.It's something I'm allowed to wear as far as the rules of the challenge go, but that through a little twist of fate I couldn't.


Just over 5 years ago a couple of weeks before my 30th birthday, Laura and I headed to the E17 Designers fair, if you live in or around Walthamstow it's worth looking out for. We have some talented artists and makers around here, and there is always something to spark your imagination. I'd picked up a couple of presents for people and was about to head out for a glass of wine when something shiny caught my eye.

That shiny thing was this gold necklace.

 

Something about it really appealed to me. I couldn't work it out. It broke both of the 'buying Ed jewelry she'll like' rules which are (or were), I don't wear gold, and chunkier is better. But I couldn't stop looking at it.

Anyway - I had a chat to the lovely designer Faith (her website is here) who gave me her card so I could go away and think about it. And I thought about it (a lot) and in the end asked Matt to buy it for me for my 30th - for whatever reason I didn't use Faiths website (I don't know if she had one then?) but just gave Matt her card and described the necklace as being 'like the sun'.

Looking back this was a huge risk - I hadn't seen anything else Faith had designed so I could have got anything. For all I knew she could have had a whole collection made up of those horrible grinning suns (she doesn't - all her stuff is very tasteful). Thankfully Faith remembered what I had been looking at and I got exactly what I wanted.

And since then I've worn it nearly every day, somehow everything else I own looks nicer alongside it. Even though it's tiny and it's light there is a comforting weight around my neck when I put it on, and when I'm nervous I rub it between my fingers.

Until I popped to Sheffield without it for a weekend, came back and couldn't find it anywhere. The weekend I was away Matt had taken up & relaid the bathroom floor, after turning the house upside down I came to the conclusion it was under the bathroom floor. I asked Matt to take up the floor to look for it and he (because he is in full possession of his senses) said no.

And so I started this challenge with simpler clothing, and a whole jewelry box full of other necklaces, but without the one thing that lifted everything I own. Every day I've got dressed and found myself lifting my hand to my throat and feeling the absence of it.

Until today. I have worked from home today and Matt is working lates this week, so when he went out to run an errand mid morning I assumed he was out getting drill bits or whatever plumbers use (really - Matt knows nothing about legislation around disabled children's rights, why would I know anything about plumbing...) Of course because he is an excellent husband he had in fact been over to Faith's to pick me up another necklace to replace my old one. 

I can't tell you how happy I was to see it. 

Matt put it on me straight away but something wasn't right, the comforting weight wasn't in the same place. The chain was a slightly different length to the one I'd had before. I still loved it, but it didn't feel like my necklace.

This is why it's so great to buy from local makers though - because when I texted Faith to say I thought my last chain was 3cm longer - she didn't ignore me, or call me a spoiled brat, or try and charge me gazillions for the change- she invited me to pop round to hers so she could put it on a longer chain. So I knocked off work a half hour early and did just that.

Here is Faith sorting out my chain and being very lovely about the second Archer home visit of the day.

And here is me on Day 46 feeling really comfortable and happy with my lovely necklace back round my neck.

 

 I'm feeling so happy about the whole thing I've donated an extra tenner to Contact A Family - if you want to join me (as at today 7th July 2015 - we've raised £1270 plus gift aid so far) you can push us a little closer to our target here

Minimalism (post one of a possible - not very minimalist- thousand)

Minimalism. It’s not something I know a lot about really. I’ve always assumed minimalists were either neat freaks (please don’t allow your child to spill anything on my white rug) or those amazing glamazons who dress entirely in monochrome and accentuate their ski- downable cheekbones with a severe low ponytail.

 

Somehow in my head I’d got minimalism confused with Elle décor . I’d made it all about consuming and showing off rather than essentially travelling light.

But since deciding to do this challenge I’ve been doing a lot of reading – mainly of blogs from other women who have committed to wearing less. And none of these blogs talk about only having high end designer gear – none of them try to dictate a set style, and many of them have an environmental or emotional attachment to thrifting and clothes recycling. 

These are women who have decided that by allowing themselves to consume everything they were losing a bit of their identity and so wanted to give themselves space to consider what they actually liked. And limiting the number of purchases they made helped them clarify this. Some bloggers talked about how their massive wardrobes distracted them and took up headspace they couldn’t spare, and minimalising the number of clothes they owned just gave them that extra space they needed for thought.

I’m not going to try to cover what all these amazing women are saying in this one blog. I’ll probably point you in the direction of a couple of the ones I love over the course of the year. But for today I’m just going to focus on one into -mind. I’ve become a little obsessed with this blog over the last couple of weeks.

I started just reading the stuff about style – I really like the way Anuschka poo poo’s dressing for your size, or picking a fashion label to describe your style but instead asks you to think about what shapes you like (she calls them proportions – here), and what colours you enjoy. Reading her blog made me feel much more like I was starting on an adventure than robbing myself of creativity (which I was a little worried this challenge would). It also made me much braver in sorting the ‘save for next year’ vs ‘sell for charity’ piles. I realised I own lots of clothes that are about who I was at another time, or who I was pretending to be. This year with less to choose from I’ve become more picky about comfort, and about things that are important to just me ( pockets – I’m taking about pockets here – I am approximately 200% happier wearing something with pockets than without). 

I’m also at an age (aren’t we all) where I’m trying to get the balance of my life right, work out where I want to be and what my priorities are. And this is why I really love what Anuschka does. Because the blog isn’t just about fashion. It’s about living slower, changing daily habits, and identifying what you care about. Last week I did the 50 questions to evaluate your last year exercise, and found it really helpful. So helpful I sent the link to a load of my friends and bored Jo’s lovely mum Rosie about it over dinner on Saturday night. 

 

 (thankfully she’s brilliant & still seemed cheerful after listening to me banging on. Here we all are after dinner - Rosie is third from the left and heroically still awake)

 

So I’m excited about minimalism now & seeing this year as a journey. I’m bored of feeling guilty about all the stuff I own that I don’t need and I’m really lucky this challenge allows me to get rid of things while supporting a cause I really care about. Far be it for me to advocate you all buying more stuff at the end of a post on minimalism, but if you want to shed some money you can donate here, and if you want a new frock I’m listing 4/5 a week for charity here.

Hope Monday was good to you all. Travel light.