Sparking Something?

With so much time on our hands recently, we were all meant to be madly Kondo-ing, de-cluttering and wardrobe-editing. Ciara O’Connor tried. But something got in the way

In 2020, a full Kondo clear-out is considered somewhat vulgar, a bit on the nose — like wearing full monogrammed Gucci, or always blow-drying your hair. A year after that book and subsequent TV show changed our relationship with small boxes forever, it’s gauche to only keep things that spark joy. Through being at home with our stuff more than ever before, and appreciating some of the mad nonsense we’ve found in our houses to keep us entertained, materialism is being rehabilitated.

Nevertheless, going through your wardrobe in these times is morally mandatory for women who have absolutely nothing else to do. But there’s a balance to be struck between hoarding and neurotic asceticism. Received wisdom says don’t keep anything you haven’t worn in a year, or two or five. I’m not so sure. Here’s some of what I kept. Because in this global pandemic, they sparked something else.

HANDBAG

This handbag, pictured below right, was perhaps designed for transporting small dogs in 2003, and was given to me as a young teenager. It’s enormous and impossibly heavy, with an inside pocket the exact size and shape of a Nokia 3310: is it naive ignorance of the transience of technology, or the wilful carpe diem, planned-obsolescence rejection of it? Either way, this pocket is of iconic dimensions and I would die for it.

It’s a cultural artefact; a boom-time relic that only makes sense in the context of early noughties Ireland. Indeed, if that time could be distilled into an object, it would be this: it’s too far, but irresistible just the same. It’s too big, too awkward, too out of place to be truly useful: it’s an Irish Model, a McMansion, a ghost estate.

But isn’t it funny how things work out? Now that

I’m in a wheelchair, this bag might actually be a goer: it could sit majestically on my lap. It will encourage social distancing while giving anyone who sees me a shiver of boom-years magic, which I think we all need right now. Now, does anyone have a 3310 they’re not using?

WRAP

A floral, fringed velvet wrap thing that’s a bit art teacher, a bit ‘Per Una does Stevie Nicks’. I wore this to a gig

I was invited to by the finest dresser I knew. It would be the best date of my life; we danced, talked, drank and fell headlong into a passionate friendship. Eight years later, I still mostly dress to delight her.

BLAZER

This size-eight sequined gold blazer, tags still on, pictured right, never fitted me and I don’t know where I’d be going in it, but the adrenaline-filled memory of this sensational bargain sustains me whenever I see it gleaming in the cupboard. To file past it in the wardrobe is a sensory delight. I have a fantasy that a tiny friend will be having dinner at my house and get an urgent phone call to go to a black-and-gold party at Lizzo’s house and I’ll offer them this and they’ll say: “Oh my god, how did you know?”

MANY, MANY SHIRTS AND BLOUSES

None is The Perfect White Shirt but most of them are absolutely fine. Hanging among them is the soothing possibility of one day looking like 1998 Julia Roberts. Each one represents my quest to emulate my grandmother’s mastery of The White Shirt. She is literally the only woman I know with an actual ‘out of a French lifestyle blog’ capsule wardrobe, comprised of tasteful neutrals in classic shapes. She might not describe it thus. But the fact is, for better or worse, I sartorially take after my other grandmother — who adored the stuff-ness of things, who had a handbag for every shoe and a shoe for every cardigan.

GROSS CARDIGAN

This same grandmother was the first person I ever heard talk about TK Maxx, after a trip back from visiting her sister in America (there, it’s known as TJ Maxx). She was evangelical, and once TK Maxx arrived this side of the Atlantic, so was I. We would often end up with the same niche items. She had this cardigan (pictured overleaf) in purple, which she wore with purple trousers and purple shoes. We will have had the same shopping experience:

One: It’s spotted on the rail, amid the knitwear (always a gratifying rack). “Ooh, a festive Nordic print! I do love a thing I can only wear at extremely specific times of the year!”

Two: It’s pulled out for scrutiny. “Holy mother of god, those buttons are literally the most delightful thing I have ever seen in my whole entire life. But is the cardie actually kind of ugly?”

Three: The care label is checked — we are no fools — “100pc wool! At that price! Sure you’d pay that for the loose buttons alone!”

Four: Make out like bandits, buy a pastry to celebrate. Frankly, the cardigan is hideous. But it contains a lot of what I loved about my mother’s mother, who is gone over a year now. And though I have been its only owner, it feels almost like an heirloom. And you know what? I haven’t seen the like of those buttons anywhere since.

MUM’S POSH DRESSES

Mum died almost five years ago, and I have nearly got rid of her clothes. I wouldn’t let anyone else in my family near them: this was my job. First of all, I put them in piles. Then I put the piles into different piles, and made other piles weeks later. The piles went into bags, which were then unpacked and packed again after being in piles for a while. I moved the bags around the house several times. Then, one day, I opened one up and said goodbye to every T-shirt and jumper and pair of jeans, then I asked my brother to take them away.

For some reason, I decided that different processes apply to formalwear — and so I’m left with about

“It’s a cultural artefact; a boom-time relic. It’s an Irish Model, a McMansion, a ghost estate”

20 years’ worth of going-out dresses (I’m lying on them, and wearing one, on page 14).

I can’t part with these kind-of-ugly dresses yet. As a child, I loved seeing Mum in them, smelling like Private Collection and wearing night-lipstick, glowing with what I now recognise as the euphoria of a night off from three young children. I remember trying these on, fabric trailing several feet behind me, the crushed velvet seeming impossibly special. I couldn’t believe normal people like us could just have something like this just hanging in our house. The 1990s ones are gorgeous: I hope one day a size-10 friend borrows the white one to elope in.

As we move into the noughties’ fare, and the more A-line shapes of a woman approaching middle age, I remember the buying of a lot of them. I’d have to drag her to the shops before a wedding, or a Christmas party. She hated shopping; I liked those days.

Rarely, I think, are mothers and daughters quite so thoroughly mother and daughter as when they go shopping together. An overheard exchange in a dressing room of a Coast or a Cos at 4pm is as rich as anything James Joyce wrote. There is a way that a mother looks at you wearing something new under changing-room lights that cannot be replicated. I never thought I’d miss it.

I have a vague hope that they might come back into fashion in 10 or 20 years. But realistically, I’m about six inches taller than she was and much longer of torso.

For the photos, I spent hours arranging, holding, folding, hanging, moving, wearing, smoothing, touching each dress in turn. And now I feel a bit different. I think I’m nearly ready to let go.

PINK FLORAL DRESS

Ex-boyfriend’s mother’s dress. I should get rid of this. I should definitely, definitely not own this. I absolutely, certainly should not wear this. But I definitely do. She had three sons and no daughters and, in the 1970s and 1980s, she was of exactly the same size (and inclination) as me — so I got lucky after a clear-out, when she gave me this pink dress, along with others.

I love it: the gathered waist, the lining, the fact that it can miraculously be worn back to front. And I loved her.

Sometimes I feel guilty about depriving any future granddaughters of hers of these heirlooms — so I couldn’t sleep at night if I got rid of them. It’s probably marginally less creepy to keep them and wear them than send them back after all these years. Right?

JUMPSUIT

The jumpsuit I was wearing when a beautiful boy I was briefly in love with told me I was a writer. Jumpsuit says: why did you need a man to tell you this? Jumpsuit says: he was hot, though. Jumpsuit says: so write something, bitch. Jumpsuit is my accountability buddy. I could never throw away too-small Jumpsuit, with its polyester tweedishness giving blue-stocking vibes, but the plunging-V plainly saying ‘slut’. Jumpsuit says: get it, girl.

ARAN-TYPE CHENILLE JUMPER

I confiscated this Laura Ashley number and others like it from my mother’s wardrobe as a teenager because they were tragic for mothers to wear, but fine for me. It seemed perfectly obvious to me that if you wore something the first time around, you couldn’t wear it the next time around, and I told her so. I got away with it as school uniform, helping me cultivate, in my imagination, a certain louche, eccentric, artistic persona.

When I put it on now, I look like a lady in a sensible jumper. It is no longer oversized and ironic. But you can’t argue with a bracelet-length sleeve for doing jobs around the house. The continued presence of this jumper in my wardrobe and its cruel reminder of my dwindling youth and the march of time, is my penance for being such a little asshole.

SUMMER AND WINTER BURBERRY HATS

Like all little girls, I was obsessed with my big cousin. Amy was incredibly cool, and I would spent hours carefully observing her preparing to go to discos. I’d sit on the stairs and watch her friends congregate in the hall, checking themselves one last time in the mirror, arranging their bucket hats: an impossibly glamorous gaggle of Cork Appletons.

These Burberry hats, pictured above and below left, were Amy’s pride and joy, the result of separate birthdays: I’d try them on to gaze in the mirror for long stretches at the cool, urbane, sexy pre-teen I saw before me.

The summer hat is actually reversible, allowing for the choice of neutral beige headwear with that surprising flash of iconic check peeking out, screaming, not whispering, fashion.

Turn it inside out, and it would take you from the office to the rave.

Eventually, inevitably, Amy solemnly presented me with the crown jewels. Burberry had become verboten and in any case, All Saints had split and word of Alicia Keys had arrived in Cork — and so Amy’s Year of The Trilby had commenced.

Today, I suspect there are some teenage Billie Eilish Tik-Tok types who would sell their granny for these fine specimens; you wouldn’t believe what a vintage woollen Burberry hat goes for on eBay.

I should probably liberate them, and take Amy to a newly reunited All Saints concert with the proceeds — unless we just buy tickets anyway and wear one each for the occasion.

It’s all the nine-year-old me ever wanted.