How to shed your SENTIMENTALI- TEES
WHEN IT COMES TO our wardrobes, we fall into two categories. There’s the minimalist: cool, calm, with the perfectly edited capsule closet. Then there’s the hoarder: chaotic, unruly and crazy-sentimental (I know because I am one). But what if you could be both? What if you could be emotionally attached to your clothes but also learn to cull your wardrobe, if not ruthlessly, then at least effectively?
Wardrobe detoxers just got themselves an unlikely icon in Lena Dunham, she with the fondness for colour, print and admirable ‘I’ll-wear-what-the-heck-iwant’ attitude. Lena hardly strikes us as the Marie Kondo type and yet she put 169 items from her own wardrobe up for sale on Us-based consignment site The Real Real this week, with all proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. ‘I realised I’d been carrying around a lot of crap, both internally and externally,’ she told The New York Times, adding, ‘I have to take all this good fashion fortune I’ve had and spread it.’
The sale was impressive in its scope, including pieces that ranged from a pair of ASOS pumps ($35) to the custommade Elizabeth Kennedy gown she wore to this year’s Met Gala ($4,000). These weren’t gifts she’d never touched but pieces she’d actually worn, with actual memories attached.
Ah, memories. There lies the sticking point of the hoarder. T-shirts, in particular, evoke a potent sentimentality and are especially hard to part with. Even as they get relegated from daily rotation to lazy Sunday, to gym, and finally nightwear, it’s hard to wave goodbye. My own ever-growing pile includes relics of my childhood (the lurid pink Minnie Mouse T-shirt I got at Disney World aged six) and mementos of my teenage hippy phase (the Vishnu-printed tee picked up on a solo trip to India). There’s the luxe (a super-fine cotton The Row tee, long lost to moth warfare) and the super-cheap (a wine-splattered one that calls to mind a particularly fun night out). There are even inherited memories, like the 1983 David Bowie Serious Moonlight tour tee that my parents bunked off work to attend in the fledgling days of their relationship.
But what if you want the memories but feel bogged down and no longer want the stuff? Take a lesson from Lena, who included a handwritten note with every piece, outlining its story and provenance. She kept the memories but passed on the stuff – it all sold out. It’s a rallying cry not to be too attached, to treasure the experience over the item. Besides, collecting memories certainly takes up less space – although I can’t say I’m willing to part with that Minnie Mouse tee just yet…