We and fashion: how to choose clothes and not change yourself

“I have nothing to wear.” How many times have we failed to find “the right” clothes for various occasions, be it a party, a business dinner or a meeting with friends. One of our glance ruthlessly rejects the entire wardrobe. The closet is full, and yet … there is not enough of exactly the clothes that are needed now. If a partner is also present during this heartbreaking scene of choice, he does not hesitate to tease. He does not understand… But we know that now not a single blouse expresses our essence.

It can be both a moment of uncertainty and a real crisis, and such a psychological state means that something is wrong with us. This means that perhaps something is changing in us, we don’t like ourselves, or we are completely at a loss.

The things we loved yesterday are no longer capable of expressing us today. The great semiotician Roland Barthes was right when he said: “Fashion is a language, and clothes are words that we cannot pronounce.” It turns out that fashion is a point of intersection of deep and superficial desires, demands emanating from the social system and the imagination of stylists.

This is a confusing mix that can be interpreted with just one gesture, making the right decision: “Here is the outfit that I want.” And it is with this gesture that we, without knowing it, acquire a particle of our own personality. How? Five examples.

1. Different clothes emphasize different sides of our personality.

“Who am I? Marina, 28, laughs. — I am a secretary in a prestigious agency with strict discipline, and I love formal suits. But in a club or a disco, I am completely different: I like to portray a vamp, maybe I am. With all those rhinestones, cleavage and stilettos, I feel at ease. It’s great to be a lot of different women.”

Our individuality has many aspects, and clothes emphasize this, and sometimes clarify the most different facets of our “I”. All this is a game of our personalities and our roles in society, and not only: after all, even Carl Gustav Jung realized that we wear a social mask in order to adapt to society. However, society is changing, and the wardrobe demonstrates this.

“Sometimes we consciously put on a certain mask,” explains social and clinical psychologist Jacopo Valli, “sometimes we dress according to who we are, and sometimes we dress up in the ideal of our “I”. We choose a dress or handbag that brings us closer to the social group we want to belong to. At these moments, unconscious mechanisms are at work in us: they force us to choose something “anarchic”, beyond the usual canons.

There is nothing wrong. “Fashion has become exploratory,” says sociologist Francesco Morace, founder of the Future Concept Lab. — There is no more dictatorship. Playing with clothes and looks can be fun, interesting, and even liberating.”

2. Clothes help us in our work.

“I always dressed impromptu, sometimes quite casually, I didn’t have time to study colors and combinations of styles,” says 36-year-old Elena. And one day I realized that I was wrong. My colleague looks more impressive due to the fact that she is well versed in the fashion world and knows how to combine colors. This is not the only one I notice. I started with the basics: gray or black suits, a little bit of blue (my favorite color), the right accessories – and I immediately felt more confident. There was an opportunity to express their point of view. I have found an ally in fashion.”

This happens to women who pursue a career and most of the time are under the scrutiny of others. This is how clothes convey the idea of ​​professionalism. Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi once explained her Armani suit: “It’s a way to do things like a man without pretending to be one.” This is the meaning of the concept of “power dressing”.

At different times, different solutions appeared: first coat hangers came into fashion (they imitated muscles and broad shoulders that women do not have), then femininity came to the fore (veils, short skirts), then “power dressing” offered strict jackets and sweaters from coarse wool.

Society offers a woman the opportunity to give herself an authoritative image. Today, a variety of combinations can help with this: a mid-length (or ankle-length) skirt with an office blouse, or trousers with a black jacket. Working women, argues sociologist Francesco Morace, “receive the fact that their mind and character can be reflected in clothes.”

3. “I changed my wardrobe to start over”

“Mikhail and I broke up after five years of relationship. It was painful. He told me that he could no longer be with a weak, insecure, nervous woman. Was I like that? I spent a year “shedding old skin” and changing my wardrobe,” shares 29-year-old Olga, proudly showing off her before and after photos. Previously, it was an everyday ordinary look, now it is well-groomed and chic. “I myself became different,” the girl admits, “and I felt the need to change the way I dress.”

Farewell to the familiar, pain, a kind of rejection of the past – this is what 60% of women who decide to change their image face. “This is a way to give up the personality that brings suffering and build yourself a new one. A method that provides a miraculous effect,” confirms Francesco Morace.

“After a mental injury, we need to pamper ourselves,” explains Jacopo Valli, “and external change can help with this. But a deeper response can also happen, the restoration of some part of yourself that was denied during life as a couple. A broken man becomes whole again. You can, for example, wear clothes of the color that “he” did not like.

Nicole Kidman said ironically after her painful divorce from Tom Cruise: “Finally, I can wear high heels again.”

4. “Classic” gives us confidence

32-year-old Lyudmila is not subject to the vagaries of the fashion industry. “I have my own style,” she says, “classic suits, a black dress for work, jeans, polo and regular sweaters for home. With these things, I always feel at home. This is how my mother dressed, and before her, my grandmother. I’m not interested in changes in fashion, I prefer to take care of quality. Such an attitude to clothes, like that of Lyudmila, is quite characteristic of those who are not interested in fashion trends.

“It’s as if Ludmila chose a uniform or an officer’s uniform that does not affect her own choice,” says psychologist Jacopo Valli. “This is a way, on the one hand, to declare one’s belonging to a certain social group, and on the other hand, not to talk about oneself, one’s passions, and individuality.”

“He who acquires any thing, even the simplest one,” says Francesco Morace, “experiences a certain external influence and interprets it. So the ability to choose clothes outside of one’s own standards does not mean inconsistency, on the contrary, it illustrates the confidence in creating one’s own style.

5. My closet is my biography

“I was a rebellious teenager, a cosmopolitan, fascinated by other cultures, a chaotic loner, a fashion victim. My closet is my biography,” says 39-year-old Marina. Now I work, I have a family. From fashion, I take pieces of my own personality, which I build as I want, mixing and inventing. I use fashion as a dictionary to find the right words.”

Each period of life brings experience. Having come to terms with fashion, free from strict rules, we understand that a thing from the distant past (vintage) may well become part of today’s wardrobe. An imperceptible, wordless revolution was taking place within and around us.

“I will no longer buy clothes to change my life,” Marina explains, “but I will buy them to express the change that has happened to me, to say something about myself. I can even afford “polytheism of the soul”, to use the metaphor of the American psychologist James Hillman – I can feel in myself many gods that live in the depths of me, and each of them will find its expression. The dress of Venus (red), the costume of Saturn (black) or Uranus (air-cool blue) … Each of these gods clarifies my view of the world.

The question is no longer what is fashionable this year, but what is similar to me. And the one who answers it will always find the right thing in his closet.