Our Take: Outfit repeating should be a badge of honour
Wearing the same look as yesterday? This year that’s no fashion faux pas, says writer Lauren Bravo. You’re actually bang on trend
I DON’T WISH to offend anyone, but I am wearing the exact same outfit I wore yesterday. Black cashmere rollneck, brown leather midiskirt, ankle boots, hoops; I was feeling it yesterday, so I’ve pulled it on again this morning. Maybe I will tomorrow, too. It shouldn’t feel radical, but strangely it does.
Because – barring school uniform, all-night house parties and ‘surprise sleepover’ situations – many of us have learned to regard daily outfit repeating as a sartorial crime. The struggle to keep up an endless parade of fresh ensembles is real.
‘I used to have such an irrational obsession with not repeating outfits,’ my friend Daisy recently admitted, ‘that when a friend asked, “Is it OK if Emma comes for drinks?”, I went and bought a new top. Because I had been wearing the old jumper last time I saw Emma.’
I wish I could say this shocked me, but I’ve done the same thing myself. The frantic mental gymnastics every morning, trying to work out who’s seen me in what, and where, and when. The apologising – actually apologising – for turning up in the same thing as last time. ‘You must think I have no clothes!!!’ When of course I do. I have loads of clothes. It’s wearing them that’s the problem. According to a Barnardo’s survey, the average fashion purchase is worn just seven times. Plenty don’t make it beyond a single night out. £30 billion worth of unused garments languish in the backs of our wardrobes, while an estimated £140 million worth of clothing ends up in landfill each year. We don’t need more clothes, guys. So why does it always feel like we do?
There are many reasons, beginning with the weather and ending with the patriarchy. When women are taught that our primary value is in our appearance, it’s hardly surprising how many of us have internalised the idea that we’re only as good as our last outfit. We live in a world where female MPS get mocked for appearing in the same dress more than once, while men can trot out the same suit they’ve been wearing since before decimalisation. Where ‘Meghan Markle re-wears coat’ is headline news. Where I feel obliged to buy a new dress for every single wedding I go to (think of the photos!), while my boyfriend happily wears his work suit with one of two different ties.
There’s cultural pressure, too. If aliens landed and looked at Instagram, they’d be
forgiven for thinking clothes were singleuse items – dissolving off influencer bodies mere minutes after they’ve been ’grammed. TV presenters wear a different outfit for every single broadcast, and we never even pause to consider how batshit that is. The rest of us don’t have PRS on hand to bike over a dress every time we’re bored of our wardrobes, but we take on the message nonetheless. And so we shop. And we shop. And we shop.
Last year represented something of a turning point when it comes to the sustainable fashion conversation, and not a minute too soon. We’re waking up to the true cost of our fast fashion habits – in human suffering, in environmental damage, and in the mental overload that tricks us into thinking we have to debut a new look every time we go to the dentist.
But if navigating the confusing, nuanced world of ethical fashion feels like too much of a stretch, here’s the good news: the most sustainable thing we can do is also the easiest. Just… wear our clothes. That’s it, that’s the tip. Those clothes, hanging in your wardrobe? And the ones shoved into drawers that no longer close, and draped over your chair, and piled in great heaps on the floor? Wear them. Aim for activist Livia Firth’s #30Wears benchmark. When you get bored, rediscover the joy of the bedroom dress-up session, styling your old clothes in new combinations. Extending the life of a garment by only nine months could reduce its carbon, waste and water footprint by 20 to 30%, so just think what it could do for our bank accounts.
When I quit buying new clothes last year, I knew I needed to get over my outfitrepeating complex if I was ever going to make it to the finish line. So I embarked on a kind of aversion therapy, forcing myself to re-wear and re-wear until the shame eased up. Here’s what I discovered:
1) People don’t notice. I hate to break it to you, but people are paying about 70% less attention to your outfit than you think they are. Can you remember what they wore last time you saw them? Well then.
2) Even if they do remember, they don’t care. In the same bizarre way we obsess over cleaning our flat before friends come round but would never judge them if theirs was covered in damp towels and empty pizza boxes, so most other people actually like seeing you wear the same thing all the time. It relieves the collective pressure on us all.
3) Even I, a serial (and sometimes cereal) spiller, don’t need to wash my clothes as often as I thought I did. A quick spritz with a fabric freshener like Day 2 spray does the job.
Luckily I’ve only had two weddings to go to since I gave up buying new clothes, the matrimonial tsunami of my late twenties having finally slowed to a trickle. To one, I wore the same outfit I’d worn to a wedding the year before (remarkably, nobody hissed or threw canapés at my head) and to the other, a dress I had worn to every other party that summer. But I’ve also started lending people my barely-worn guest dresses, to give them a further lease of life. My friend Helena has been showing my favourite Coco Fennell frock a good time on the Home Counties marquee circuit, and I love knowing it’s having more fun than I alone could give it. And that’s the kind of spirit we need to bust the stigma. Instead of panic-buying something new the night before every occasion, how about we take pride in trotting out our old favourites? Our greatest hits. We shouldn’t feel ashamed every time we wear the same dress to another round of birthday drinks; we should feel like Paul Mccartney, striking up Hey Jude.
We need to stop seeing older clothes as lesser clothes, and start respecting the wise elders of our wardrobes. The things they’ve seen! The stories they could tell! Those familiar, worn-in items with happy memories lingering around them like 2013’s perfume. I feel more like myself in those clothes, if I’m honest. They don’t itch or dig in, and I know I won’t spend the day tugging them back into place. Clothes you panic-buy on your lunch hour come with no such guarantees.
So I’m calling for an outfit-repeating amnesty, starting now. Let’s give our favourite clothes the life they deserve, and actually wear them. Wear them out. It’s the least we can do.
We shouldn’t feel ashamed every time we wear the same dress; we should feel like Paul Mccartney, striking up Hey Jude