The Pleasure of Clothing

Addressing Dressing

My sister said to me recently, “You get just the right amount of pleasure from your clothes.” Her remark was strange on a couple of levels. First, the nerve of the woman (she’s eleven years younger) assessing me like this. Second, what exactly is the right amount of pleasure in one’s clothes? And how can she tell who has it or not? What would too much pleasure look like?

I confess I do get some enjoyment from my clothes. First, there’s the tactile element. Some fabrics just feel good against the skin. Thin cotton knits, silk, and especially cashmere all feel wonderful close to the body. Most sweaters make me itch, but not cashmere, which I wear almost every day from October to May. (I get cold easily, what the French call “frileuse.”)

My mother and mother-in-law always gave me cashmere sweaters on my birthday, and as the years rolled along, I accumulated quite a collection. This October I opened my treasured cashmere drawer to find moth holes in almost every sweater. The cedar balls and lavender soap and moth balls (three lines of defense!) in the drawer seemed to mock me as I confronted my loss. I put the remaining few sweaters in Ziploc bags.

One can get pleasure from both ends of the spectrum! Just as a weighted blanket can be delightful as well as a down comforter, so although I adore the softness of cashmere, I recently bought a shapeless handwoven garmet with a slightly rough nap (opening image). This is now my comfort dress or nightgown, a multi-use item. In summer, I’ll wear it over my bathing suit. My heart jumped when I saw it at the textile museum shop in Oaxaca City.

And that thrill of joy should be the reason you buy a piece of clothing. You should feel a longing to wear it at once; indeed I often leave a clothing shop the with my old shirt in the bag and the new one upon me. Failing that, I have to say “yes” to the question I always ask myself: Do you want to wear it to the next . . . fill in the blank. If it’s casual, I have to wear it to the dentist. If dressy, I have to wear it to the upcoming concert. If at home I have something I like better in its category (spring jacket or long skirt), I don’t buy the new item. I should love it so much that I need to wear it ASAP! This rule has saved me a lot of money.

And what makes you love an item of clothing? It should make you look good, by your own standards, and flatter your best feature, be it your complexion or wide shoulders or small waist. And it must project an image of yourself of which you approve, be it goth or coastal grandmother or eternal hippie.

My cheeky but savvy sister gave me another shopping rule: don’t be swayed by “Such a good buy!” Even if it costs only 20 bucks, marked down from 60, it’s a very poor buy if you wear it only once. One should try to ignore the perhaps theoretical original price on the tag. Would you buy it if you didn’t know it was discounted? That is, if it just bore the price tag $20 and not an x-ed out $60? These are questions to ask yourself in the store.

It could be useful to think of the price per use (as it were, amortizing that pair of $190 pants) rather than the absolute price—but one can rarely predict what item will become a great favorite to be worn perhaps a hundred times and what will get worn only once because after a couple of hours, it just doesn’t hang right.

For me at this point, shopping is something of a guilty pleasure, because (except for underwear, socks and shoes) I probably won’t need to buy new clothes ever again. I shouldn’t consume more resources; I should “shop” in my overstuffed closet. But one does like to feel up to date, and perhaps a little guilt adds to the pleasure.

Or maybe I should only buy vintage. But clothes from the fifties and earlier make me feel self-conscious, as if I’m in costume. So, no, that blouse from the forties is quite fetching, but if I wear it, I’ll feel like Joan Crawford and not Cathy Hiller. I like clothes that make me feel so at home they disappear psychologically as soon as I put them on.