ANOTHER SHINY & NEW THINg

The following piece centers around the examination of two pieces of clothing, a tie dye sweatshirt, worn twice during COVID, later to be thrown in the back of a closet, and a black lace corset, purchased just yesterday in anticipation of the owner’s night out on the town.

From the dusty, corner of his vantage, tie dye sweatshirt spotted a new addition to the closet. She was hung on one of the finest hangers his owner had, black velvet with a shiny silver hook. Store tags from her previous home, Urban Outfitters, still dangled from her strap, a taunting reminder of the fact that she was the new, shiny thing. Knowing how short lived this title would be, a week at most, was the only thing that consoled him.

Sure she hung there, seeming to radiate superiority over the other pieces hanging in the closet, or discarded on the floor, but tie dye sweatshirt knew it wasn’t her fault, not really. Afterall, how was she supposed to know any better? She had spent her short life span in the front window of a store, gawked at by the hundreds of trend hungry girls who passed by. Tie dye sweatshirt supposed that there was a time in his life when he felt that superior too. Back in the days of COVID, when his siblings and he were posted all over social media and in the shopping carts of every tween, twenty-something, and anywhere in between.

There was once a time when an addition to a closet was chosen with care. The principles of quality over quantity always followed. Back then, a new sweater would be welcomed into the owner’s closet, made to complement the other, well-loved and well-worn pieces in the closet.

In closets today, every piece competed for the owner’s attention, wanting so badly to become the piece that defined their style. The tricky part is that seldom clothing owners had style these days. Were they fashionable and able to follow trends? Sure. But did they have a true sense of style? No. They found themselves drawn to whatever they saw in their Instagram feeds. The cycle of their closet was as constant as the changing of tides, nothing ever really stayed in the forefront of an owner’s mind.

Tie dye sweatshirt decided not to hold the past of black lace corset against her. “So you’re the new, shiny thing around here?” he said. “Yes. It was love at first sight for my owner. She knew that she had to have me the moment she saw me and immediately brought me home.” How sincere those words sounded, yet how naive tie dye sweatshirt saw them to be. He remembers the day he met his owner too, she spotted him in a tagged Instagram post and could not whip out her credit card fast enough to purchase him, with two day shipping nonetheless. It didn’t last. He made it a full five days hanging in the front of her closet before being replaced by a mesh mini skirt from a different online shopping excursion.

What tie dye sweatshirt didn’t say was that this experience was not love at first sight, but lust at first sight, something that is easily confused at the moment. Their owner may have found themselves excited about their style at first, but unlike love, the excitement did not last. Their owner couldn’t help it, she too was caught in that vicious cycle of mindless consumption with no end in sight. Consumerism was what the phenomenon was called and almost every woman from the ages of 13 to 35 fell prey to it. In an effort to fit in with the crowd, they chose clothing pieces that they believed would earn them the approval of others. Because they never really chose these pieces for themselves, once the trend came and went, so did the desire to wear the piece.

There was once a time in which clothing was a true extension of one’s self. You wore what you loved, not just so that others would love it. It was when one found true style that they loved the pieces in their closet the most. Nothing was cast aside in the corners, everything was proudly displayed and worn time and time again. When an owner had true style, their closet was not packed to the brim, it was carefully curated and edited to reflect their authentic personality.

Tie dye sweatshirt knew that he would likely find himself in a trash bag headed to the dump, or if he got lucky, Goodwill, before his owner made this shift. All he wanted was to be loved and taken care of, worn more than a handful of times. It was his wish for some of the other pieces in his owner’s closet to make it one day, even if he didn’t.

Our closets and the planet deserve better than this model of ownership. It is time to step away from the ever growing clothing pile and into the world of slow consumption.

By Elisabeth Olsen