(No. 10) We're used to butter clothing
The nation’s changing emotional topography might originate in our dressers
There’s been a busting attention to clothing construction and materiality lately as we try to dress smarter (and honestly quieter) in the shadow of a looming recession. I hyper-focus on my wardrobe—thanks to a nice little cocktail of image anxiety and environmental concern—and it feels nice to be in sync with mainstream attention as we all cripple ourselves with concern over our closets.
Trends are taking the backseat. Classic pieces like chore coats and plain clogs are still as durable and evergreen as they always were, but now they’re covetable. There’s an interesting quality about some of these high-quality investment garments that separates them from their modern counterparts—the discomfort.
We understand and accept that natural textiles are superior to modern plastic blends. These natural textiles include cotton from the cotton plant, linen from flax, wool from sheep, coir from coconut husk, and silk from fibroin aka insect cocoons (no really). But these plastics, basically anything besides the above, are masterfully rebranded every few years, boast better performance, more comfort, and lower prices.
Whether we think plastic textiles are better or worse than natural fibers depends on what we care about… and this isn’t about what we care about. This is about what we’re used to.
Why does it feel like plastic textiles are everywhere? Like there are no easy alternatives? Because there aren’t. For the American majority, it’s what people buy. It’s the only thing we tolerate as the future of fashion morphs into the future of physical comfort.
The description of these plastic textiles as buttery, from an Articles of Interest episode, stuck with me. I’ve been trying to wear less athleisure, opting instead for traditional ways of coping like linen shorts for hiking and wool coats for the rain. And I’m incredibly jealous on hot days when I see Lululemon shorts and Goretex shoes. I question why I put myself through discomfort just to what, make a point?
Morning comes around after a night in elastic boxers and the outfit set out on the chair for the day seems impossible. Daytime-me seems impossible.
I dislike American convenience. Even though it benefits me every day, I’m disturbed by how it accelerates processes to oblivion and discards nuance. I wish knew how to weave and mend a garment over a lifetime as a part of my basic education. I wish modern clothing could withstand vigorous lifespans and not slowly poison us with toxic chemicals and dyes.1 But chemises and handmade soaps existed in a painful history and now we have leggings and washing machines… for the better.
What I call “midwestern teal” is hyper-pigmented, infused into plastic textiles rather than absorbed as a dye. Midwestern teal asserts immortality. (Naturally occurring blue pigment is extremely rare, including indigo dye for denim, and most of the blue color we see in nature is a result of light refraction rather than pigment.) When I was abroad in Scandinavia for undergrad, I noticed a considerable lack of this color and the type of dress it coincided with. To me, it became a signifier of comfort clothing.
The colors we wear say absolutely nothing about our value as people, but they do represent (in a very non-scientific way) a signal. A sweat-wicking t-shirt in midwestern teal says ease, comfort, fun, and convenience. At the same time, a white linen button-down says tradition, class, labor, and functionality. If, and that’s a big If, we have an active choice about what we wear, those signals emanate as much inwards as they do out.
My beau prefers rough clothing because it makes him feel more equipped for the day, like emerging for a snow day in puffy overalls. I think we’re all more fine-tuned to the link between physical sensation and mode of being after being locked in the same location for the pandemic dark days. We receive signals from our clothing. How we feel and what we’re wearing are tangled up in a big mash of emotion, physical sensation, and self-image.
To feel equipped for the day I might want to feel productive, protected, and strong. When it’s time to rest, the armor comes off. My home clothing is worn by a totally different person than me. Nightime-me is safe and vulnerable. She talks in a baby voice to a little cat. She’s an acquired taste. Don’t trust anything she says. Morning comes around after a night in elastic boxers and the outfit set out on the chair for the day seems impossible. Daytime-me seems impossible.
Emotional frontloading happens in all kinds of dress. I wear natural textiles or high-fashion clothing to feel simplicity and abundance, but these qualities are embedded in quiet luxury (also called stealth wealth) and I can’t ignore the causality or causation of it all. Cashmere sweaters make me feel adequate as if I’m worth as much as my folk knowledge of warmth and grandma hand-me-downs are worth. But at the root of it, I think these clothes make me less anxious about American oblivion. It’s an attempt to resonate more with who I’d like to be, which is some kooky European-looking woman on the seaside in the woods.2
Unfortunately, if midwestern teal is about efficiency, quiet luxury is a glacier of virtue signaling and whitewashing.
A portion of the Articles of Interest transcript between host Avery Trufelman, Ulrich Simpson, designer and owner of the small independent denim brand UBi-IND, and Emma McClendon, associate curator of costume at The Fashion Institute of Technology, is as follows:
AT: Today, Ulrich is one of the few patient people who will actually wear raw, unprocessed denim.
US: I’m sure I’ve been chafed (laughs) but yeah, I mean, it’s just part of the process. It’s like breaking in a pair of shoes. Anything.
AT: I dunno, it kind of seems a little more extreme than that to me. Breaking in denim means you have to wear these thick, heavy, scratchy jeans for like six months without washing them.
EM: If you get something on it, you maybe try to vacuum or brush it off.
AT: And after all that time, after those many many weeks of chafing, you finally wash those jeans for the first time… And that first wash will reveal all the marks you’ve made. All the crinkles around your hips when you sit, the imprint of your iPhone in your back pocket, and then they will finally have that soft, worn-in feeling that we all associate with denim. But this is so much work! Only real denim heads bother to break in their own jeans.
US: It’s the, maybe 3% that will actually wait and go through that process to get it to then feel like this.
AT: And this is the one that’s been artificially processed?
US: Yeah, artificially processed.
Breaking in raw denim jeans or exercising in linen garments are learned behaviors escorted by privilege. They require spare time and the upfront cost of the specialty goods, but they also require freedom to have an interest in the first place without fearing total societal ostracization.
I personally think about the cowboy iPhone commercial (below) VERY often.
It’s familiar but inaccessible. I used to drive by Harrison Ford’s house in Jackson Hole and dream of all the old authentic ranch stuff that must be in there. Old cars, new iPhones, designer sofas, elk antlers. It’s easy to fantasize about the wild west because we don’t have to experience the prairie grass and buffalo hair mattresses, the manual labor, and the disgusting social injustice.
My time on ranches and farms in Wyoming wasn’t spent in buttery soft leggings. I wore overalls and leather boots. But I’ll never be a part of the cowboy dream and chances are, neither will most of us.
Popular investment garments acclimate us to paying more for clothing, which is a long overdue exercise in itself. We pay more for unbroken leather boots and stiff canvas pants. A net benefit for both consumption habits and the environment.3 But having nice clothing—that we (I) may or may not take off as soon as we (I) get home— means nothing about our character or strength.
We’re pretty soft now. If softness means we wear ugly comfortable clothing and sleep on foam mattresses, fine. It also means we don’t tolerate (as much) injustice and strife, largely Americana ideals, that made us less than human in the past.
Modern clothing stretches and conforms in an almost supernatural way. It’s a subconscious example through our physical sensations of how we should behave emotionally. We could allow more tug and pull at our beliefs. A little more give in our hearts. I think that’s where actual character and strength lie.
So if I know all of this, why can’t I just deal with wearing athletic shorts?
[Fin]
For your consideration:
If you’re like me and love to fantasize about homesteads and natural textiles and other white lady stuff, I recommend following Maya Beth aka @yama.homebody and/or Julie D. O'Rourke aka @rudyjude on Instagram
Not delved into in this piece is the disastrous environmental and humanitarian impact the garment industry has and my own commitment to buying exclusively second-hand as a result. Here’s a snip of the Articles of Interest episode transcript linked above that I find especially pertinent:
AT: Emma McClendon says we’re at an unprecedented phase in clothing history. We’ve never had so many clothes available, with so much plastic in them. And no one knows what these leggings and sweat-wicking jackets and super stretchy jeans are going to look like 30 years from now.
EM: Plastics don’t age well and we don’t see it, because we throw it out before we see it at that stage.
AT: In the future, our jeans, which we’ve gone to such great lengths to make appear loved and worn in, will probably not age like those jeans in the Levi’s archive.
EM: This is what people need to realize: plastics sometimes age in such a way that they are attempting to go back to a gas, or they want to go back to a liquid. … These things are giving off noxious fumes, and again, we don’t see this because we see plastic as disposable but that’s what this stuff is doing in these landfills.