Small means waiting for it, and in this, we find beauty.

Humans are beautiful because they desire.

I think the hardest but most beautiful part about shopping small or secondhand is the patience it requires. Often, I find myself in the period of waiting and longing, knowing I want something but not being able to find it just yet.

Waiting always teaches me something about myself. In that empty gap of not owning something, I often learn that my desire was born out of an insecurity, or constructed lack. I need this because I am not XXX enough, or, this Thing will make me more XXX. Profit-driven, media-fuelled narratives often mean I see myself as lacking, always in need for the next new or better thing to create a newer and better version of myself.

When will we realise that we are not lacking subjects, but desiring ones1?

In the waiting, I’ve learnt to understand my own needs and wants better. Rather than what the model is wearing on the website, I’ve come to understand how my body feels in different shapes, textures or silhouettes. Rather than the stories social media or advertising is telling me, I’ve come to prioritise how my heart resonates with a certain person selling something, and the stories they tell. Rather than seeing myself as insufficient, I see myself as a desiring subject, someone whose yearning and craving brings them out into the world, to connect and resonate with objects and people.

1 Rather than seeing ourselves as lacking individuals, I want us to see ourselves as “desiring subjects”, where our desires empower us and expand us, and are reflective of our instinct to be connected with the people and world around us. As a “desiring subject”, I want us to focus on our potentials and possibilities rather than what we lack.

It is human and normal to desire, to yearn, to crave. I hope for us to crave from a place of truth, from a place of knowing ourselves better and more intimately.

With this, comes the sheer joy of finding something that fits just right with us – when this happens, I feel not more or less, but simply more of Me. This is taken at The Fashion Pulpit when I found a linen blazer that fit me perfectly. It was a happy day.

I don’t want small to become Big, because small is so, so beautiful.

Instead of mindless self-indulgence that only leaves us feeling emptier, “shopping” could be a beautiful experience that fills us. A sensorial, tactile experience of touching, seeing, holding in our palms; one of connection and communion as we listen and share, forming relationships with people and their treasured objects; even one of grounding and self-knowledge, as we become more intimately attuned to our own needs and wants.

This is where I want the narrative to be: not for us to beat ourselves up into wanting less, but realising there is so much more for us in shopping small.

Perhaps it is through the smallest ways we engage with the world that we build something bigger and more beautiful, together.

ESTHER KOH is a writer, reader, as well as a consumer and lover of all things small and secondhand. Her journey into writing about consumption began when she started documenting her shopping experiences and finds on Instagram, and realised the importance of sharing alternative stories and experiences of consumption. She runs the instagram account @wearwelive.sg where she documents and archives small and secondhand businesses around Singapore. She is passionate about healing our relationship with consumption, and believes that our interactions with the material world, rather than destructive, can be restorative and life-giving.